| While messing with shadows and transparency settings, I thought I'd try to create some cool effects and see what Keynote could do. While you can't get the kind of blurs you can do in a program like Photoshop, you can get some nice soft effects.
WARNING #1: This technique only really looks good with a solid background. Feel free to try it over other types of backgrounds, but the effect might not look quite the same.
WARNING #2: This is by NO means a scientific process, it's basically trial and error with two different settings, I am going to attempt to give you enough instruction to get started, and then you can play with the settings until you get them the way you like.
Here's a quick example of the kind of effect we're looking at. The large word Build in the background looks soft edged. This was done in Keynote and is NOT an externally created effect. The text is still editable in Keynote.
Example 1
Example 2, an even softer and more transparent version
Step 1.
Create a text box or use a Title or Body box and fill it with a very large word. I used Gill Sans at 500 points for this example. For added effect, you can run the word off the edge of the slide.
Step 2.
Select the text (or the text box), and change the text color to match the background of your slide.
Colors Palette
IMPORTANT:
Now, the color of this text is your First Variable. To get different shades of softness, you can vary the darkness and lightness of the text color by sliding the darkness slider up and down in the Colors palette. In the first example above I chose a color slightly lighter than the background. In the second, softer example I used text that was the SAME color as the background. To do this, drag the VERTICAL slider, not the horizontal Opacity slider
NOTE:
If you are following my example exactly, I am using the FREE Dots and Lines theme from this site. I started with the SAME color text as the background, and then I made the color a little lighter by dragging the slider UP a little. You can save time for this example by entering the color I used for this example in RGB so you don't have to do this. To enter the RGB values, simply click the icon in the Colors palette that looks like a red and green slider, and then make sure the pop-up menu says RGB sliders. The values I used are in the image below.
And here's the finished Text, before we add the shadow. Notice it's a little lighter than the background.
Step 3.
Okay, make sure your text box is selected but don't click inside it. We want to just have the box selected, not the text. Turn ON the shadow for the text box in the Graphic section of the Inspector. CHANGE the shadow color to WHITE. Leave it white, as this is NOT one of our variables for this effect. You can use the Blur settings I have here, or you can mess with the Blur amount to get just the right softness. I don't consider this a full variable, as quite a few settings work, but make SURE that you leave the Offset to ZERO and the Opacity to 100%. Higher Blur numbers tend to look better, but you can try different numbers for different effects.
Step 4.
Okay, next drag the Opacity slider back and watch the text slowly fade into the shadow behind it. This is Variable Two. You should see the distinct edges of the text slowly fade away as you lower the Opacity. Go too LOW and you won't be able to see your text, go too HIGH and you'll still be able to see that this is a shadow and not just blurry text. For the SECOND example above I used an opacity of 14% because it worked better with the text being the same color as the background.
Other ideas:
Try adjusting the text darkness up and down, and then adjusting the opacity up and down. You'll see what your particular background color can handle. Once you play with some shadow settings you'll see that you can create some pretty cool effects. For added effect you can even layer TWO copies of the same text box on top of each other and play with the different shadow effects.
Disclaimer:
I have not tested this with every color combination, so it may not work for you, but you can at least give it a try and start messing with different settings. You might just come up with something cool.
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