Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the new
Dynamic Backgrounds feature in Keynote.
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Apple released a new version of Keynote this week. Version 12.1. You can get it in the Mac App Store
and note that you need to be using macOS Big Sur or newer to use the most recent version of
the apps like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Now the big new feature is Dynamic Backgrounds.
Now Dynamic Backgrounds can easily be seen here in these 3 new templates that come with Keynote.
But you don't need to use these templates at all. You can actually use Dynamic Backgrounds
in any template you want or even in an existing Keynote presentation you've already created.
So I"m actually going to start here with the basic black presentation. In order to access the Dynamic
Backgrounds all you need to do is select nothing. Just click on the background to have nothing
selected. If you have an item selected, like here, then in the Format sidebar you'll be controlling
the item you have selected. But if you click on the background, like that, then the Format
sidebar here will just show you things about the background. But now you have the choice between
Standard and Dynamic Backgrounds. Standard is just like before. You can choose a color, gradient
or image, and Dynamic is the new one. Choose that and you can choose one of these dynamic
backgrounds which basically are flowing colors. So you can see there actually are four pages
of them here shown by these four dots. So I can move through these and the last page is actually
empty for you to add your own customizations. You could click to select which one you want.
So this one right here is selected. I could click here to select this one instead.
Notice these move. So the background is subtlely moving here as you watch it. That's
why they are dynamic. They are always moving. Each one of these is a little bit different.
You can go through them all to familiarize yourself with how each one is different. For
instance this one has a pattern that is moving towards you like this. Whereas this one has a
gradient that is shifting from the top right to the bottom left. This one kind of looks like waves
flowing from the right to the left. There is a whole variety of them. So take the time to look at
each one to see which one could be the most useful to you. They all have names too. If you move your
pointer over them you could see the name. There's Black Smoke. Lime Juice. Solar Flare, etc.
Now the Preview Motion switch needs to be On or it is just static which is fine if you want it to
use less processing power and it's also maybe easier to focus on what it is you're creating
if you just have the Preview Off. It will still play when you play the presentation.
With Preview off it's just going to be off while you are actually editing your presentation.
Now whichever one of these you choose, like let's choose this one here, you have these colors.
You can move these around and change these. For instance I can change this deep black right here
to something else. If I click on it its selected and I can see in the Color Picker here I can
easily choose a color. So let's choose this and you can see how that color changes. Let's click
here and change to something else, like that. You can use any part of the Color Picker here
to adjust that one and kind of make that thing your own. Now I can scroll up here and usually
see more. In this case there is Speed, so I can speed this up greatly and you can see how
quickly it changes. I can change the height here of the shapes and the peaks, like that.
But each one has its own set. So if I go here, for instance, I see a lot more colors and I can
adjust the scaling here. I can adjust the angle in this case like that and the speed of movement.
I can also, of course, adjust these colors so it will adjust just that part of the rainbow
there. Here's this one and you can see all the different colors here. I can adjust the movement.
I can even have it go backwards. That's moving back. Adjust the height. Different this one.
I get the colors that are used by the shapes and I also get a background color. So I can change that
as well. You can see that tints everything. I can change the speed and amplitude of what's there.
So there's a lot that you can do
to change how each one looked and kind of make it your own instead of looking exactly like
somebody else that might be using the same dynamic background. Now if you do make
adjustments and you like those adjustments, and you want to keep this and use this again,
then all you need to do is go to the last page here, click the Plus button and it will add this
here. So all of these settings are now saved in this Preset and you can easily reuse it. I also
want to point out that if you're using different backgrounds on different slides, like on the
second slide here we'll do dynamic and we'll use this one with colors, the transitions work
perfectly. So I'll go back to this first slide here, I'll go to Animate, I'll add a Transition,
let's do something like Dissolve, and now you can see how it works right there. If I were to play it
and then advance to the next slide with the Spacebar you can see how it nicely
goes from on to the other. Both of them animating while it dissolves.
Now as you can see other elements, like Text, appear on top of this background. Just like a
static background. So if you add a shape it's going to be here on top of the background. This
is true for images as well. So I can bring in an image here, so you can see here the background
animates behind the apple. Notice also that when you have something selected, whether it's text
or an image, the Preview pauses there. Probably for performance so it's not taking up all that
processing power doing that while you're trying to edit something else. But if you select the
background again by clicking away from everything you could see the Preview continues because I
have Preview Motion turned On and, of course, when you Play it's going to show the animation.
So you can also, of course, create a shape that actually has a hole in it to have the
background only show through part of a hole. So if I create a box here and stretch it across
and then maybe create another shape here, like this circle,
select them both and then do Format, and then Shapes & Lines, and
Subtract Shapes you could see now I've got that hole right there. The animation for the
background is actually playing through that hole. I can switch it to another animation there so
you could see it a little clearer. Or I can take a shape and actually put it on top, like this,
and notice if I set it to a color but then set its opacity to something semi-transparent
then it tints the entire thing as well. Also, this animated background will show up if you
export as a video. So I'm going to go to File, Export To, Movie and
then I'll just use the Default settings here as an example. I'll Export. I'll Open it up and Play it
and you can see there the background is animating. So that means you could actually
put one of these backgrounds onto a blank slide. Have that slide play for 60 seconds or something.
Export it and then use that background in iMovie if you wanted to.
So this is an interesting new feature. It definitely gives us something better to use
as a background for our presentations. In the next few years I would expect to see a lot of
presentations created using these backgrounds and also a lot of videos shared to YouTube
created in Keynote as well. So play around with these and see if you could use them
in your next presentation. Thanks for watching.