Just when you figure you’ve got all the angles covered, someone comes along and bends another one. Many times, that someone is yourself (or in my case, me). Just as I finished up the last little missive I hit upon another idea. Sure, if you export as PNG with an alpha channel (Millions+) it gets rid of that pesky background, but if that’s the case, what the heck is

Include transparency for? If it works automagically, then why oh WHY have it sitting there to taunt and mock me? Because, dear reader, that is the way of the Apple.

From the Keynote help “If the slideshow includes transparency you want to preserve, select Include transparency.” Well, I’ve got objects I’ve altered the opacity on and some text that’s at 5%, is that what they mean? No. In many cases your objects will be in front of opaque objects or the background so that even though your shapes and things have varying levels of opacity your theme graphics and backgrounds are set and don’t have transparency. YET.

For a blast from the past, check out my article on using Comic Life with iWeb here. In this experiment, this was the first time I’d noticed that the good ol’ color picker has an opacity slider. This made short work of an otherwise sticky problem, but of course I didn’t stop there. I wanted to know where ELSE you could use the opacity slider and it turns out  pretty much anywhere. Try it with a gradient fill like the shape behind the text on this page. Your questioning mind should now be wondering, “How can I take advantage of this previously unknown undeniably astounding functionality?!?” (or some variation thereof).

Just like yesterday’s example, start with a White themed “Blank” slide.

Then, open the inspector and in the Slide pane under the Appearance tab you’ll see an area where you can choose the Background. Currently, it’s set to Color Fill and the color is white. Clicking on the color chip brings up the Colors screen and you can either drag the Opacity gadget to the left OR type a zero in the space provided. Doesn’t look different? Well, that’s ok, this is just how Keynote displays zero opacity. You won’t notice it until you perform the actual export.

Now that you’ve got this slide set like you want, let’s go through the steps I did to create the above image. Duplicate your slide, find a nice image and place it on the second slide (you know, it’s always handy to have an innocuous picture of a longboarder handy). Select the first slide again and set the slide transition to Swoosh. Next, save your project, then choose File -> Export. Select the QuickTime export, choose Self Playing Movie for the Playback Control AND click Include Transparency.

Now, this next part is a little different. If you click Next... now, you will be given a dialog asking where to save. However, if you go ahead and save at that point, the resulting file will NOT have transparency (because it’s not using PNG). Instead, under Formats: choose Custom... then, for Video, you’re going to click Settings... and make the following settings changes (if you’re following up from yesterday, then these will still be set this way, just check to make sure)

Change the Compression Type to PNG

And the Depth to Millions+

Click OK, then Next... and choose where you want to save it. Open the file in QuickTime and find the frame of your choice. (If you hadn’t made the first slide’s opacity zero, then this image would be zooming out of a black rectangle.)

Follow this up with the Preview Passthru I described yesterday (maybe that definition should have a page of it’s own!) and you’re done! Now, how useful is this? Hmmm, maybe not very much, BUT the Key is that now you’re aware of it, you may actually find a use for it in a project one day and you’ll be glad you added THIS lil’ recipe to your QuickTime Kitchen!