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Instant Alpha and Masks: Saving the effect
Posted by | Posted in Tips | Posted on 08-13-2007
One of the amazing new features of Keynote is the Instant Alpha. Together with Keynote’s Masking, they make a pair of tools that are not only good for use in Keynote but in other applications as well… if only the Mask could be copied out of the application. You see, the problem with the feature is that if you select the masked or apha’d image, copy it, then paste into another app (anything except the other iWork apps or iWeb), you either get the entire image (with the case of masked images) or the image with a white background (in the case of alpha’d images). There are ways to work around this limitation by doing a little extra in Keynote before you copy OR by using the other iWork apps. First, Keynote plus work.
Keynote plus… nothing?
In order to save the effect of Instant Alpha or Masks using only Keynote, what you’ll need to do is to create an extra shape (I use the rectangle) and change it’s Fill and Stroke to None. Essentially, it’s an invisible shape. However, selecting this shape along with your masked object before you copy forces Keynote to store the additional information required for the masking in your Copy. When you paste, you’ll see your creation just as you intended it. Of course, you’ll also be seeing your invisible rectangle too, but seeing something that’s invisible doesn’t really bother many people!
Utilize your resources
You may have bought iWork ’08 for the cinematic presentations of Keynote, but let’s not forget it comes with two partners, Pages and Numbers. Strangely enough, neither of these programs have the copying limitation that Keynote has. So, if you just Copy the masked object in Keynote then Paste into Pages or Numbers, the image you copy from either of those programs will paste into any other app with the transparency preserved.
I’d love to see this fixed in a future version, but for now one of these workarounds for the limitation will do nicely!






Thanks just what I needed
I was really disappointed that I couldn’t copy and paste the alpha’d images as I expected. Thanks for posting this Ken.
Nice one thx
You really are just adding the bounding box that is required by pdfs to enclose the main graphic.
Pity that Apple thinks it is a good idea to make the better features of its software so obscure and hard to use.
I think this was just an oversight as both Numbers and Pages behave as we would want. Like good users, we’ve entered feedback hoping this to be resolved!
Ken,
Thanks, but I’m still having trouble!! I am trying to get my image from keynote to motion after alpha, but still no go…I have put it both next to a rectangle, and inside a rectangle, (with fill and stroke set to none. copied…I can get it into pages and numbers, but not into motion..sigh…any other ideas, or a sense of what I might be doing wrong?
Mike,
Have you tried the other route which is, once you’ve got it in Pages or Numbers, copy from those to Motion? I’m not sure if there’s some core Motion incompatibility, but I’ll be happy to help you troubleshoot it.
using transparency as mentioned above, would you be able to create .jpg and .png files using keynote? and could keynote do .svg?
just wondering, for basic graphic creation, for say web icons or navigation buttons, would keynote be suffient? can it do gradient fills etc?
how do you find OS X’s text editor?
thanks, i found the article above, to be interesting and is definitely moving me closer to the mac direction, haven’t been able to get one yet buy hope to soon.
regards
nathan
Yes, you can create .jpg and .png files from any object you can copy by using Preview. Just copy, Open Preview, do Command-N, then save as another format (png, jpg, etc). You can find out more here.
Most of the images on the pages you’ll find linked to from that page were all done in Keynote (with other helper apps mentioned as applicable).
OS X’s text editor is sufficient, but, if you install the developer tools (which are free and come on the OSX discs), the text editor that is supplied with Dashcode is much better (color coding, line numbering, etc.)
I had this same challenge and came across a nearly hidden, but easy solution.
Preview has an Instant Alpha feature. Yes, Preview. Load your image and then click-and-hold the selection button. Voila. You’ll see Instant Alpha along with a lasso and a few other toys.
After you do your alpha thing, you must hit “enter” just like you’re finishing a crop.
You must save as a PNG.
Done.
Pages and Numbers can also do Instant Alpha on their own with no need to cut and paste from Keynote.
Preview’s Instant Alpha is slightly different from iWork’s. Depending on your image, you’re likely to get different results. For example, Keynote attempts to smooth it’s mask. This is great for picture edges as it removes aliasing, but it’s bad for small features as they get smoothed out. Because of this, it’s difficult to replicate a Keynote Instant Alpha in Preview and vice versa.
You don’t have to save as PNG, any of the other file types that support Alpha transparency will work too (like TIFF or JPEG-2000).
Also, I do mention above that Pages and Numbers don’t have the same problem with retaining the Instant Alpha effect when copied to other apps. That’s why one workaround for Keynote users is to “Copy the masked object in Keynote then Paste into Pages or Numbers”
I can copy and paste the image into Pages, but once I try to copy and paste from there into Word, it shows up with a black rectangle around it. I can copy and paste to iWeb and conserve the alpha, but how do I export an image from iWeb to a folder?
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