More Frames in Keynote Application

11/02/2008 01:26KeynoteUser.com » Blog Archive » Accessing all the available Photo Frames in Keynote ‘08

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« Quick Keynote ‘08 new feature listWhat? Hidden strokes too? »

Accessing all the available Photo Frames in Keynote ‘08Posted by Brian Peat

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I’ve had a few more hours with Keynote (This post was written shortly after iWork 08 was released), andtoday I want to look at how the photo frames function works. Years ago I created something I called“Stretchables” for my Keynote products. I never really did much with them, though some of my themescontain Stretchables in the extras files. It appears that Apple took a cue from these (no idea if they stole theidea or came upon it themselves, most likely they didn’t steal it) and have now implemented them in Keynote‘08.

Basically, there’s a new stroke option called Picture Frame:

But you’ll notice there are only 12 frames. NOT SO! For some reason, Apple decided to embed quite a fewframes (and even use them in their included themes), but not show them to the user. If you crack open theKeynote app and drill down through the Frameworks folder, you’ll see this:

11/02/2008 01:26KeynoteUser.com » Blog Archive » Accessing all the available Photo Frames in Keynote ‘08

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I’ve shortened it a bit to fit on this page, but there are 72 frames in that folder (and one called None). 72frames and all we get to choose from is 12!

Well, I wasn’t content with that, so I started messing. At this point, I still hadn’t found a way to expand thatmenu of 12, but I did notice that each of the Apple themes uses a different frame, and I found that you caneasily copy and paste a frame from one file to another to use it in your own presentation.

As it turns out, there IS a way to get all of those frames into your stroke menu. There’s an xml file insideKeynote that lists the available frames. When you add more frame names to this xml file, they show up in theInspector. Here’s a shot of my copy of Keynote ‘08 with some of the available frames:

Basically, if you control click on your copy of Keynote (oh, make sure you keep a fresh copy of the apparound just in case you break something) you’ll see the option to view the package contents. Choose that, thenopen the contents folder, then resources. You’ll see a file called “BGGraphicInspectorFrames.plist.” Open thisfile in your favorite text editor and you’ll see the original list:

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Now, to save you the trouble of finding the complete list buried inside the Keynote app, we’ve provided theactual replacement file for download-though you might actually want to keep reading before you download it.Full Plist replacement file

At this point, you can either open the original file in a text editor and replace the text with the file we’veprovided, or you can replace the entire file inside the Keynote package (make sure you quit and relaunchKeynote for the changes to take effect). But there’s a problem…even on my 20″ monitor, Keynote can’tactually display all 72 frames, it chops off all but 59 of them (I’m not sure if the 4.0.1 update fixed that either).So if you’re going to go this route, I suggest simply copying and pasting 50 or less of them into the list andbeing happy that you now have 50 frames to choose from instead of 12. here’s a shot of our working list witha bunch of frames, but not the whole lot:

and, so that you don’t have to mess with things, here’s the final plist file all trimmed down with our favoritesin it.

One interesting side effect of the way Apple built the frames system is that if you decide to reverse engineerthe frames so you can make your one unique frame, it still must be installed INSIDE the Keynote app to work.The problem with that is that if you DO build your own custom frame (we’re not talking about the hack above,we’re talking about creating your OWN frame from scratch) if you wish to share a presentation that uses thatframe, you must also install the frame in any copy of Keynote that will be used to open the file. This is finefor your own stuff, but not so great if you’re giving presentations out that use custom frames. I wish Applehad built a system that allows for custom frames to be embedded inside a theme file and then carried over into

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the resulting presentation, but it doesn’t appear to do that.

We hope you like this first “hack” of Keynote ‘08, stay tuned for more Keynote (or iWork) ‘08 fun!

UPDATE: We’ve built a Keynote file that contains all the frames, so you can use this file to copy and pasteframes out of, instead of patching your copy of Keynote. Download it here.

Next: What? Hidden strokes too?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 1:10 PM and is filed under General, Tips. You can follow any responses to thisentry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

22 Responses to “Accessing all the available Photo Frames in Keynote ‘08”

1. Tim Archer Says: Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 1: 46 pm

Wow! Thanks, Brian. I continue to be overwhelmed by your generosity.

—Tim

2. Gerry Says: Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 3: 17 pm

I hope you don’t mind me linking this post in my blog. It’s awesome, and thanks for putting it together.

3. Charles Szasz Says: Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 9: 58 pm

Brian,

Thanks for that great tip! I found a bug in Keynote’08. If you have 67 or more themes, you cannot see All of the themes whenyou select Themes from the Toolbar. Some of the themes are off the top of the screen and you cannot scroll to them.

You can see and select all of your themes if you New from Theme Choose under the File menu.

4. Brian Peat Says: Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 10: 01 pm

Yeah, I found that bug yesterday and mentioned it in the story we posted yesterday. I have over 160 themes, so yeah, in the dropmenu I can’t see them all, which is fine with me as I never use that menu anyway.

5. Deb Says: Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 3: 33 am

Huge thanks for frames file!!!

6. iPom' Says: Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 4: 01 am

Génial !!!! Works great in French version

7. mcstuff Says: Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 4: 09 am

Where is located this Frames folder, if I open Keynote 08 through show contents…, and go to Resources, there is bunch oflocalization folder, folders like Themes, Glyphs, Fills but I can not find the Frames and Strokes, which can be seen on your

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screenshot. So far I have only trial version, but should be the same.

8. iPom' Says: Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 4: 13 am

The same problem, and so same solution in Pages, with the SLGraphicInspectorFrames.plist file

9. Brian Peat Says: Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 8: 03 am

mcstuff,

it doesn’t go in the Frames folder, so you don’t need to worry about where it is. It goes in Contents>Resources. You’ll see a filewith the same name in there, just replace it (on a copy of Keynote of course).

if you DO want to see the frames folder, it’s in:Contents>Frameworks>SFRendering.framework>Versions>A>Resources

10. Brian Peat Says: Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 8: 11 am

WHOA! if you turn on the extra 5 Smart Strokes in that other file, you’ll get 5 more frames at the top of the list. Seems theFIRST of those frames is actually a new kind of stroke pattern and not a frame based off an image.

Here’s the list of strokesOverstroke (already there)Fuzzy OverstrokeOutsetRoundedWobbly OverstrokeDoodles

11. Brian Peat Says: Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 8: 14 am

just use the current file (BGGraphicInspectorSmartStrokes.plist) as a reference and add the other 5 items to it, each inside theirown set of string tags (this blog engine won’t let me post the code, it removes the string tags).

12. mcstuff Says: Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 8: 37 am

Thanks for path, I was not able to find the location for Frames folder.Some of these hidden frames are from iWeb, because this function was already in iWeb 1 - under the name - Graphical Border.

13. mcstuff Says: Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 9: 26 am

So, it looks that frame is classical frame PNG File cutted in 9 pieces - the 4 corners and top, bottom, right and left part+ corresponding mask, in plist file is just assigment of file names and inset. That is great, I have ready some frames for webgalleries so I will try add some if it works.

14. Brian Peat Says: Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 9: 29 am

Yep. Would you believe me if I said my earlier themes came with something I called “stretchables” which were images built thesame way, with 9 parts. They came as part of my extras files and you could build your own frames in Keynote that way. Nice tosee we’ve got a real frame system now.

the only problem is, I made a custom frame, but had to install it INSIDE Keynote. And then it’s only supported on MY copy. Iam hoping there’s some way to install custom frames inside a theme, but I doubt it.

15. Ken Drake Says: Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 12: 25 pm

The folx having fun with iWeb may find out the specifics regarding adding in new frames and that would no doubt help us.

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16. Russ Carlson Says: Sunday, August 12, 2007 at 4: 11 pm

Thanks for your generosity. I am constantly amazed at how much you share.

If/when you hack with building new frams, here’s 2 I would use.An old Polaroid picture (wide bottom margin)One of the frames is a stack of three, with the image on top (page 5 of your .key, bottom center). I’d like to see the same stack,but with the first hidden and second showing, and also with the bottom one showing. Sort of a flip through the stack.

17. Brian Peat Says: Sunday, August 12, 2007 at 4: 25 pm

Thanks

The problem with making your own is that anyone who wants to view your presentation (if it uses the custom frame) MUSThave the frame installed. So if I make any, they will be free to everyone.

Oh, my brand new Keynote 08 theme, being released this week, has an image of a Polaroid with a photo placeholder set on top ofit. Not as handy as a real Picture Frame in Keynote, but it works well. Look for it this week

18. Nem W. Schlecht Says: Thursday, August 16, 2007 at 3: 54 pm

I wrote a quick perl script to parse the index.plist files for all the frames in the Frames directory to fetch their name and previewicon. I copied them all to a folder and took screenshots in finder to use as preview images for the many available frames. Thishelped me a lot figuring out which frames I wanted and which ones I didn’t care for (without having to restart Keynote multipletimes).

http://nemws1.googlepages.com/keynoteframepreview

Maybe somebody else will find it useful.

19. Brian Peat Says: Thursday, August 16, 2007 at 4: 11 pm

that’s pretty handy! Thanks!

20. Anne Lloyd Says: Sunday, August 19, 2007 at 9: 45 pm

Brian- Thanks so much for sharing the cut & paste frames! So much better for browsing. I was interested to see that the “book”images will change the binding orientation (landscape or portrait) as you rotate the image.

Anne L.

21. Johnny Says: Thursday, August 23, 2007 at 7: 31 pm

Just a note to say that on the 30 inch screen, you can see all of the frames. I count 74 total.

Whooohooo !!

22. Brian Peat Says: Thursday, August 23, 2007 at 8: 23 pm

There are 72 regular frames, and a few “Smart Stroke” frames as well. I counted 73 inside the app, but one of those was NONE.

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11/02/2008 01:32Nem - Keynote Frames Preview for iWork '08

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Keynote Frames Preview for iWork '08

Keynote in iWork '08 includes many optional frames. See this entry at KeynoteUser.com for more

information.

To use one of these frames, edit the file BGGraphicInspectorFrames.plist in Contents/Resources

in your Keynote application (right click and select Show Package Contents). Use the exact name

that appears by the icon (using an underscore or space where appropriate), but do not include the

filename extension (.tif or .png). Restart Keynote and the new frame should be available.

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