Creating a quick presentation

Hi. I'm Jess Stratton, and welcome to Monday productivity pointers. This week we're talking about KeyNote, which is Apple's presentation software. KeyNote for the iPad allows you to make professional, gorgeous, polished-looking slides and presentations in minutes. If you're a business traveler who's ever had to do a last-minute presentation while on the road or on the bus, this is for you. Or maybe you just like to work on the couch in front of a nice fire. Today I'm going to start from scratch, and create a presentation with a few slides and a few pictures, just to show you how easy it really is.

I tend to speak at our ten conferences a lot, and I used to have to bring a heavy laptop to present, just because that was the only option to me. But now, my iPad is my go-to conference device. It's tiny, it's portable, and I can get the job done with a quarter of the weight that I used to have to carry around with me. Alright, let's get started. With KeyNote open, I'm going to tap the plus and then tap Create Presentation. Now here's where I can choose a theme. Pick one that you think would give you a good start to your presentation.

I'm going to choose Modern Portfolio because it just looks modern and that's what I'm going for. If I tap Modern Portfolio, now I have a base line from which I can start my presentation. The first thing I'm going to do is change the picture. In the bottom right of the picture, I can tap to select a new picture. And I'm going to choose one from my camera roll. I can find one that I like. And it's going to auto-fit into that place holder. Now I can just double-tap where it tells me, to start creating the title slide for my presentation. When I'm all done, I can double-tap the next section to continue typing.

From here I can tap the keyboard, to get back to my slide so I can look at it. And if I want to make any changes I can just tap what I want to change. For example, marketing plan, now I can tap the paintbrush, and format the text the way I want it. For example, I can make the text bold by clicking on the Style tab. The bottom of the slide, we can tap the plus to get a new slide. And here's where we choose from several content placeholders. I'm going to choose the half photo half text, because this one looks nice and it's going to go along with what I'm trying to do.

Now, the first thing I'm going to do is change my picture. If I tap the photo icon in the bottom right again, I can choose a new photo. And this time, I can swap it out. Once again, I can double tap, and start adding more text. To make new bullet points, tap the Return button, and it'll give you a new bullet. When I'm all done, I'm going to tap the new slide, because there's one more thing I want to show you. This time, I'm going to choose an all-blank slide, because I'm going to show you some neat things that you can do with pictures. I'm going to start by adding three pictures in succession.

Now that I've got these photos, I can select and drag in the bottom right hand corner to resize them. There's a couple things that I'm going to do with these pictures. The first thing I'm going to do is arrange them in the general area that I want to on my slide. Now, there's a couple that are different sizes. I can make sure the pictures are the same size by dragging one while tapping another picture that's the size I want.

If I let go at the same time, both pictures will be the same size. I can also mask them and arrange them differently. For example if I click the paint brush icon, I can select Arrange, and I can move to front or back to get the layering the way I want to with my photos. I can mask my photos by choosing the Arrange tab and selecting Edit Mask. This is basically a crop and I can stretch or shrink them how I want. I can select Mask, and now I'm zoomed in.

I can also use two fingers and rotate the photo. Finally, I can add a picture frame to all these by selecting the paint brush, choosing Style, and picking a nice frame border for them. Now this is a nice slide of photos. Let's say I want to arrange slides, the last thing I'm going to show you, is how you can arrange one slide, and multiple slides. To rearrange one slide, simply take your finger and drag the slide where you want it. You can rearragne multiple slides at the same time.

I can hold one slide out, and while I'm holding it, I can use another finger to tap the slide. Now they're both selected, and I can drag them wherever I want. So that's how easy it is to create a beautiful presentation in minutes with KeyNote.