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Batching photos into slides in Keynote
Posted by | Posted in Tips | Posted on 03-02-2009
Every so often this question comes up on the Apple Discussions. “How do I take a folder of photos and batch them into one photo per slide in Keynote?” Turns out there’s an easy solution to this that might be so obvious that you’ve never thought about it.
The trick here is, instead of looking for some sort of advanced insert or import function, simply open a folder of photos in the Finder, select all of them (command-A) and drag the whole lot into the slide list on the left hand side of the Keynote window. Keynote will then import all your photos and stick one on each slide.
If you don’t want huge image files floating on your slides, you can also visit the Keynote prefs and check the box next to “Reduce placed images to fit on slides” before you import your photos. This will resize your images to fit on the slide. Thankfully, this feature doesn’t crop your photos, it simply resizes them and leaves either the top and bottom or sides hanging off the edges of the slide if the photo isn’t the same proportion as your slides. One issue with this feature though, is that it permanently changes each image, meaning it literally resizes your images and saves a new version inside your Keynote file. So if you were planning on enlarging and cropping some of your images after you import them, you may not want to use this feature.
One other catch on older versions of Keynote is that some versions have issues with the order. Keynote 09 appears to always sort photos on import alpha-numerically, but older versions sometimes would bring the photos in with no apparent order. The solution is to view your photos in List view in the finder and view by name before dragging them into Keynote.
simple, elegant and useful
with my KN 09 ist still not working (random sorting). I use the iPhoto collection of the desired images in Keynote. Sorting is correct this way
It seems Keynote version 5 is now working correctly. After importing my pictures into Keynote all slides/pictures are sort as expected – form 1.jpg to 99.jpg and not from 99.jpg to 1.jpg as in version 4.
Cool!
But how can I make the photos fit in a slide? So that nothing hangs out the sides of the slide (but leaves some of the slide with the background color)?
Hope you understand my english…
Othmar
This works great except when keynote automatically resizes my vertical images, it resizes for the width, not the height, so the images are very cropped. Any ideas on how this could be fixed?
Hi,
to have them sorted properly, you have to put your finder window in ICON view and not list view. I did it several times and worked perfectly this way.
I can’t fit the ENTIRE picture on the slide. I want the whole slides just to have that picture and nothing else, but there’s always a third of the picture hanging off the slide. Do u know how to fix this?
Sincerely,
Mac User
As mentioned on the Apple Discussions thread you linked to, the photos are only placed in the right order if you set the Finder window to column view first. I tried icon and list view, and the order was mixed. Thanks for this tip!
The random ordering issue has been driving me crazy, and none of these sorting/viewing solutions seemed to work for me. I finally realized that Keynote was importing the images in the order in which they were selected. If I opened my image folder and hit command-a, they would sort randomly, but if I selected the first one, then just held shift and down arrow as they were all selected in name order, they were sorted correctly. Hope that helps!
Thank you, when I put them in Icon in order of name and select and drag from there, they are in the correct order—this post just saved me so much time!
Apparently this doesn’t work in Keynote ’09, darnit!!
Is Keynote limited to Macs or can it be read cross-platform?
Thank you in advance,
B. Bateman