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Using Keynote to produce a scientific poster

I would really love to use Keynote to make a scientific poster for an imminent conference. Back in my PC life I used to use powerpoint, and would simply make the poster fit on one slide, by increasing the slide size to the size of the eventual poster (A0 or 118.9 cm x 841 cm). I can't seem to do this on Keynote - even converting the size in cm to pixels. Is there a maximum slide size limit? Does anyone know how I can get round this? (I really don't want to go back to Powerpoint!)

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Apr 11, 2008 9:03 AM

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Posted on Apr 11, 2008 9:08 AM

Welcome to the forums!

Is there a reason you're not using Pages? It's designed for doing print work, and Page Setup will let you specify whatever custom page size you want.
19 replies

Apr 13, 2008 9:32 AM in response to susylong

I made a scientific poster in Keynote a couple weeks ago. I imported a Power Point template for a poster into Keynote. The slide size was 3456 X 2595 pixels. I reduced the slide size to 1024 X 768 pixels and created my poster. Then, I increased the slide size again to 3456 X 2595 and had my poster.

Because the printer I was then going to use did not recognize Keynote, I exported to PDF and printed my poster. I could have also exported to Power Point as the computer that ran the printer I was using had the Power Point application.

Apr 27, 2008 5:17 PM in response to AKAZ10

Hi AKAZ10, quick question regarding your Keynote scientific poster.

Why did you reduce the custom slide size (3456 x 2595) to 1024 x 768 first, and then increased it again?

In other words, do you recommend doing this, or would working with whatever original slide size obtained from PowerPoint work in Keynote?

Another question, for anyone out there that may know:

I have to create a scientific poster to fit into an easel with quite interesting dimensions (interesting b/c I am used to horizontal layouts, but this one will have to be vertical/portrait):

36 (Height) x 30 (Width)

What pixel size should I use so that my Keynote poster fits this easel size?

Thanks!!!

May 12, 2008 7:38 AM in response to susylong

I've almost finished making a portrait poster 1 m x 1.5 m in Pages. I started it in Keynote because i saw the video on using Keynote in the Science section on the Apple website. However, I think it was easier in Pages. After all, that's the kind of thing Pages is made for! My only (and biggest) gripe about all of this is that as a scientist i still can't display error bars in the graphs!! It's SO frustrating that Apple is touting Pages and Keynote use to us scientists and then doesn't give us the tools that we need. I will still use Pages for finishing the poster because it looks great, however i do wish Apple would respond to the basic needs of scientists...

Grant.

May 12, 2008 6:51 PM in response to Grant Abt1

I've seen this gripe before and, as a scientist, don't understand why Pages or Keynote should be expected to generate scientific plots. Why don't you just use Matlab, R, or whatever statistical package you use for your analysis to create the plots you need then import them into Keynote or Pages via PDF, PNG, etc? I made some pretty cool plots a few months ago in Matlab, exported them as PDF's to Illustrator, removed the bounding box and background, and imported them into Keynote. When I added a drop shadow in Keynote the axes, plot symbols, etc. all cast their own shadows. Subtle yet effective.

Dave

Jun 17, 2008 11:47 AM in response to hightower302

Again, if your output will be print, Pages is a much better application than Keynote to do it in. If you really need text wrapped in Keynote, one workaround is to do the layout first in Pages (using text boxes and whatever figures you need), then select all the objects and copy them to the clipboard. Next, open Preview, and in the File menu choose New from Clipboard. Save the resulting image as a PDF, and you can insert this into your Keynote slide. The text will no longer be editable in Keynote, but because it is a PDF it will be easily resizable without losing quality.

Using Keynote to produce a scientific poster

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