1: Choose a template
Open Keynote and select a template. We’ve chosen a bright, fun template which will hopefully attract children’s attention.

iPhoto is one of those applications that we rely on an awful lot. For years now it’s been the only place we store our photos and as a result it’s easy to take it for granted and even forget that it can be tailored to make life a little easier.
One area that could always do with Time needed: 5 minutes being a little quicker and more precise is the import section that springs to life when you connect a camera or insert an SD card into your Mac. Here, the software can do a couple of things to improve the efficiency not only of the import itself, but also to where in the software those pictures are then stored and displayed. You may need to make these changes each and every time that you import but they will save you a fair bit of time and effort later – whether it’s helping you locate photos faster or saving you having to sort through duplicates or similar shots.

Comic books (or graphic novels) have been popular for decades. One factor in their success is perhaps their interesting presentation of information, with the arrangement of panels on each page enabling the reader to focus on key story points.
This panel-based layout is a terrific template to present your video footage in, as you can make a few clips look much more interesting than they would if you simply cut them together. iMovie’s Comic Book theme pops your clips into comic-style panels, adding an extra level of colour to your productions. The animated, rostrum camera-style transitions add extra movement as they pan from one panel to another. You can even add comic book-style captions to help tell your tale!

One of the things that firmly made iMovie a beginners-only application for movie editing was the lack of control users had over audio. Unfortunately, without professional equipment, it’s near impossible to make sure that every single clip you record on your video camera or iPhone has similar audio levels.
Luckily, in the latest update Apple has made sure that audio editing is a little simpler and a lot more thorough. You can very easily change the overall levels of a clip by clicking a button and dragging the values up and down. You can also, using the audio editing window, apply changes to the EQ of each clip. EQ allows you to change the values of sounds at different frequencies. This may sound advanced, but it’s really not. In our experience, a little bit of simple exploration can lead to huge improvements in sound quality in just a few clicks.

1: Cogs away
Click the Settings cog on a clip that you would like to adjust the sound on. Then, once the menu bar has appeared, click on Audio Adjustments. This will bring up a dedicated window for you to play with.

The setting of preferences is a key aspect of making your computer and software work the way you want. All the more so for Mac OS X, as it comes with its own array of preferences that can be easily set and tweaked.
In fact, working with your Mac and enjoying it has a lot to do with making its interface look, feel and do things just as you desire. This significant configuring is achieved through the clever, and yet simple, interface of the Mac OS X built-in application called System Preferences. Read on to understand how to set all of the most relevant applications and system settings on your Mac so that it will look and operate just the way you want.

iPhoto is a great tool, not just for offering an easy way to view the thousands of photos we’ve been taking over the years, but also as a means to keep all of those memories organised, so they can be found with ease at any time. Unfortunately iPhoto can be a little too clever for its own good. If you go out with friends of an evening and stay up past midnight, iPhoto will split the pictures up across that midnight divide. So, instead of having one event for the night out, you’re left with two. Of course, this simply will not do, so you’ll have to manually combine the events later on. The same applies to when you go for a weekend away or a longer holiday. Luckily combining events is incredibly simple and can be completed in just a few seconds. You will need to be looking at your pictures in the Events view. From there on in, it’s really a doddle. Here’s how…

1: Drag and drop
Click on an event and simply drag it onto another one. You’ll know when the technique is working because the event you’re moving the pictures into will become backlit and a + icon will appear on your mouse pointer.

When we watch a stage play, we see the action unfold as a single ‘shot’. However, one long wide shot would make a boring video. When viewing video, the shots’ different durations, angles and sizes help to tell the story. You could shoot with multiple cameras to capture different angles of a single take. However, as you probably only have one camera, it makes more sense to emulate Hollywood filmmakers. They tend to shoot with one camera and then repeat the action while filming from another angle. We filmed a man feeding horses. As his actions were repetitive we were able to capture different shot sizes and angles. We’ll show you how to cut the footage together as if there were several camera operators recording the action.

Some might say that a climatic ending is what makes a good movie. Whether that’s true or not, it’s definitely the part that everybody remembers. Be it a movie, book, piece of music, videogame or, as in our case, a presentation, suspense, pace and drama are crucial to keeping the audience captivated. This common technique of slowly building suspense to culminate in a grand finalé is especially useful when creating presentations, particularly if you are building up to a big announcement. The example that we are using here is the annual financial report for a small business. The big announcement at the end is the net profit, so we’re going to use a combination of animation techniques in order to give it extra importance and to emphasise that this is the highlight of the presentation. Follow these easy steps to learn how.

If you don’t like the pre-installed templates in Pages, or if you prefer to make your own mark, an alternative is to import your own design elements. It’s really easy to do, and a great way to add your own personal touch to your designs. Following the recent revival for hand-rendered type and illustration, we’ve created our own elements by sketching them out with pen and paper, then scanning them into a computer and saving them. Don’t panic if you can’t even draw a stick-man though; there is a wealth of resources available online, such as clip art and textures – much of which is free. All you need to do is check the copyright if you intend to publish your project commercially. Here is everything you need to add your own creative flair to your projects.