Keynote for iPad –Animating Photos on a Slide Part 6

Did you miss part 5? Keynote for iPad – Animate a Chart, Graph, or Table on a Slide

Animating photos on a slide is an easy process with Keynote. There are two major approaches you can employ. You can use builds to add or remove elements from a slide. You can also use the Magic Move transition to create more elaborate animations.

Let's explore the build process.

1. Tap the animate button . Keynote prompts you to select a slide or object.

2. Tap a photo on the Canvas that you want to animate.

Buttons appear near the object, indicating any build effect that has already been applied. If no build effect has been applied, both the build in and build out buttons are labeled “None.”

Design Tip
Be sure your photos are high enough resolution. You'll typically want to size them so they are double the size of your design canvas. For Keynote on the iPad, make sure your pictures are at between 2,000–4,000 pixels wide. This will give you flexibility to size or zoom an image.

3. You can now choose to add an effect that reveals (build in) or removes (build out) the chart. Tap the “Build in” or “Build out” button, depending on how you'd like the chart to move onto or off of the slide. The Build In or Build Out window appears.

4. Tap the name of an effect from the Build In or Build Out window. You can scroll to choose from any of 13 effects for chart or graph builds.

Once you choose an effect, a preview animation plays automatically. You can click the play button in the Build In or Build Out window to repeat the preview.

5. Once you've selected an animation in the Build In or Build Out window, you can customize it.

  • To change the duration of a build, tap the Options button at the bottom of the Build In or Build Out window. You can then drag the duration slider to adjust the speed of the animation.
    • Many effects in the Build In window have additional options such as direction or Up and Down choices.


• To specify when a build starts, tap the Options button at the bottom of the Build In or Build Out window. On Tap begins the animation when you tap the slide. After Transition lets you set a time interval with the Delay slider.You may need to scroll in the window to see all options.

Changing the Order of Builds

As you add multiple builds to a slide, you'll notice that they have numbers that indicate their build order on the slide. The build in numbers are yellow and the build out numbers are black.
The default numbering is based on the order that you added the animations. You have complete control however and can reorder things, as you like.

  1. Select any object on the canvas that you've applied a build to.
    2 Tap the animate button in the toolbar.
    3 Tap an existing Build In or Build Out button.
    4 In the Build In or Build Out window, tap the Order button. The numbers on the slide and in the window indicate the order of animation.
    5 In the Build Order window, touch and hold the right end of an item. You can now drag it to a new position.


If you see three yellow-colored dots on the upper-right corner of a slide thumbnail (in the slide navigator) it means that a build has been applied to a slide.
Interleaving Builds

In Keynote, you can interleave animation elements, so that multiple events take place concurrently. For example, you can have a block of text and a photo animate concurrently. You can change the order in which objects move on and off a slide at any time, even interspersing

In order to interleave a build, you must have more than one Build animation applied.

  1. Select any object on the canvas that you've applied a build to.
    2 Tap the animate button in the toolbar.
    3 Tap an existing Build In or Build Out button.
    4 In the Build In or Build Out window, tap the Options button.
    5 Choose one of the following options to link two animations together.


  • With Build # – Let's two builds happen at the same time. You can also set a delay for the second object with the Delay slider.
    After Build # – Let's you create a hierarchical relationship. One build occurs immediately after the other finishes. Again, you can set a delay for the second object with the Delay slider.


To preview the animation, click the Play button in the Build In or Build Out window.