looking for a free slideshow app

[crazzy88ss]

I recently got a job as a photographer for a local news website. They want me to create slides shows that they can upload to their website. EVERYBODY/WHERE only talks about "soundslides" but I don't want to pay $60 for it.

Requirements:

1.) free

2.) Allows me to add captions to each image

3.) Works on OSX

I'm having a damn hard time finding something that can do this. Any ideas?

[.Neo]

Apple Keynote. It has the option to export presentations as a QuickTime movie. There's a 30 day trial availabl that you probably can reset by trashing the preferences.

[crazzy88ss]

oooo I already have a version of iWork somewhere; I don't have it installed cuz I never used it, but if that works, good call. Thanks!

[PyX]

I suggest you waste 15 minutes of your time on Apple?s website to learn about Keynote and its functionality. The videos on their website are just plain awesome. My jaw dropped when I saw what it was over Powerpoint :)

[.Neo]

Keynote is amazing. I avoid using PowerPoint like it's the plague.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

I am quite adept with PowerPoint, having been the "go-to guy" for presentations (and so on) in about 3 roles. I hated doing it, but that was based solely on the fact that 99% of people have no idea what content should and should not be in a presentation, and bombard viewers with nonsense. Also I feel that PowerPoint is the black-sheep of the Office family and is severely lagging behind in the usabilitystakes. But overall, I do like what can be output from it if you know what you are doing...

And then Keynote blasts it totally out of the water. Maybe it's the included templates, maybe it's the mindset of the users - but the output tends to look infinitely classier!

[.Neo]

And then Keynote blasts it totally out of the water. Maybe it's the included templates, maybe it's the mindset of the users - but the output tends to look infinitely classier!

Yup. So far I managed to amaze my teachers and fellow students with my Keynote presentations. (Y)

[PyX]

Yup. So far I managed to amaze my teachers and fellow students with my Keynote presentations. (Y)

Just out of curiosity, I?d be really impressed to see a presentation of yours. I know you?re studying in erm, cinema if I?m right, and knowing how you use your Mac, your designs must murder the competition.

I?ve also started Keynote in the last semester only, but haven?t got so many presentations to do so far and in the world of engineering, I really do have the feeling that they don?t give anything about the visual design. But maybe it?s because I had to convert my Keynote files into Powerpoint, because that?s what they have at school (yeah....) that didn?t help.

Come on Apple, bring on Keynote 2011 and make it possible to do things like on www.prezi.com, but without the Flash part. :)

[crazzy88ss]

Yea I think this will work for my needs, in one way or another. Thanks guys! I'll pop over to the turtorials when I get a chance.

[.Neo]

Just out of curiosity, I’d be really impressed to see a presentation of yours. I know you’re studying in erm, cinema if I’m right, and knowing how you use your Mac, your designs must murder the competition.

It's not really hard to beat my fellow students. They all use Powerpoint for Mac or Windows. ;)

But it's not like I do something extremely special. I make use of Keynote's build-in templates and animations. I do add my own fonts.

There are options and effects there Powerpoint simply does not have. Not to mention I always found Keynote to be a lot more user-friendly.

[PyX]

Thanks guys! I'll pop over to the turtorials when I get a chance.

It?s nothing ;) And yes, this part will not only make you say "wow" but you will also gain your 20 minutes back and many more minutes, I promise :p

What I find strange in presentations is when we do them in team, I usually to a killer design in either Powerpoint or Keynote, but when one of any partners has to modify something, he really doesn?t care at all about the design, the alignments, the quality of the images I steal on Google, etc.

There?s this horror story that happened last year, I was astounded.

My background was the same dark gradient that Steve uses, and my fonts were also the same. I used high quality, high resolution pictures found on Google and used the embedded Keynote option to remove the background.

Well, beside this picture, one of the guys added a really small logo of another company that he grew 5x bigger to become pixelated, with a square, white background, and it was a jpeg picture with a 60% quality. I just couldn?t believe it with my own eyes.

Some people really just don?t care sometimes... I?d have to show you a screenshot, knowing how you?re obsessed by non-uniformity and misaligned things, you?d hang yourself. Did you ever come across those problems!? Whenever I tell them not to screw up my designs, I am taken for a dude that is obsessed just by the looks and not the content of the presentation...

[PyX]

When I read that on Panic Blog : http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/10/spinner-rage/

I immediately thought about myself, especially at the end of the blog entry where he screams :p

[crazzy88ss]

It?s nothing ;) And yes, this part will not only make you say "wow" but you will also gain your 20 minutes back and many more minutes, I promise :p

What I find strange in presentations is when we do them in team, I usually to a killer design in either Powerpoint or Keynote, but when one of any partners has to modify something, he really doesn?t care at all about the design, the alignments, the quality of the images I steal on Google, etc.

There?s this horror story that happened last year, I was astounded.

My background was the same dark gradient that Steve uses, and my fonts were also the same. I used high quality, high resolution pictures found on Google and used the embedded Keynote option to remove the background.

Well, beside this picture, one of the guys added a really small logo of another company that he grew 5x bigger to become pixelated, with a square, white background, and it was a jpeg picture with a 60% quality. I just couldn?t believe it with my own eyes.

Some people really just don?t care sometimes... I?d have to show you a screenshot, knowing how you?re obsessed by non-uniformity and misaligned things, you?d hang yourself. Did you ever come across those problems!? Whenever I tell them not to screw up my designs, I am taken for a dude that is obsessed just by the looks and not the content of the presentation...

As the former Production Manager (read that as Lead Page Designer) of my university's student paper, I completely feel your frustration. All they care about is the words and nothing else.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

All they care about is the words and nothing else.

Never a truer word spoken! They care about the WORDS, they try to make it "sound impressive"... They don't care about the MESSAGE, just the words. As such, a slide can completely miss the point, but contain some very business-sounding sentences.

[Southern Patriot]

I am taken for a dude that is obsessed just by the looks and not the content of the presentation...

Yeah, but what you need to try to get across to them is that the looks are 90% of the content. Last night at church, our study group was watching a PowerPoint presentation on the gospel of Matthew, and it was so poorly done that my wife and I simply sat there counting all of the spelling errors (and there were a LOT of those).