Quick "Cheat": Aperture’s Keynote Action Pack in LR

Lightroom 2 has added lots of new, useful features. For now at least, it looks like one area that has not changed (in LR2-Beta) is the slideshow export. LR still can only export slideshows in basic PDF format. That means that it only preserves basic transitions, but looses all audio that is possible in LR, but not in exported PDF slideshows. I have been thinking about a possible workaround, and actually came up with an unlikely idea - combining Aperture’s and Mac’s (Automator) scripting abilities and adapting them to LR. It’s a “cheat” that works great on the Mac. Alas, no such luck on Windows, though. Here is the recipe:

INGREDIENTS: You will need to be working on a Mac, will need to have Keynote (not necessarily the latest, 08 version; Keynote 06 is fine); of course, you need an installed copy of Lightroom.

The “cheat” requires a few simple steps:

1 - go to Apple website and download and install the free Aperture trial (do not panic - I am not trying to get you to switch to Aperture - we will only need Aperture once - you don’t even have to launch it - but my guess is, that it needs to be installed; you can try skipping this step, and see if it works - if not, repeat the process without skipping this step).

2 - download the Aperture Keynote actions, unzip them, and place them in your Keynote folder;

3 - now, start Keynote; create a blank presentation with just one blank slide; then, start Automator (even if you have not used it before - it’s installed on your Mac by default); when it starts, in the initial Automator dialog box / screen that opens, click on CHOOSE;

4 - now, we will create a simple Automator workflow: in the left-most pane of the Automator, select FINDER, and in the second column from the left, select GET FOLDER CONTENTS; drag that into the rightmost automator window; (TIP: click on the thumbnail to see what it will look like on your Mac's screen).

5 - in Automator’s leftmost pane, click on KEYNOTE; in the second pane, click on PICTURE SEQUENCE FROM FILES (this is one of the Aperture Keynote action pack actions your downloaded), and drag it into the rightmost Automator window, placing it under the previous “lego brick”; in the dialog, where it asks for SLIDE MASTER click on the drop-down-list and choose BLANK; it’s a good idea to have the “Create slide notes…” option checked (although it’s not required). Then, optionally, select (by checking) as many metadata items as you want to place in the speaker notes - you can choose any metadata you want (e.g., your photos’ Caption). (TIP: click on the thumbnail to see what it will look like on your Mac's screen)

6 - In the Automator file menu, click on SAVE and save the workflow somewhere where you can easily find it later (e.g., Lightroom folder or Desktop)

7 - Hang on - we’re almost there! In Lightroom’s grid, select the photos you want to export; export to jpg as you normally would, but in the POST-PROCESSING section of the export dialog (the last option at the bottom) select SHOW IN FINDER. Export to an empty folder of your choice. Once the export is done, and LR shows your new jpgs in Finder, switch back to Automator and RUN THE WORKFLOW (RUN button in the top right corner). Relax an watch the fireworks begin.

8 - automator will place each of your jpgs on a separate Keynote slide; it will also scale the photo to fill all the slide automatically; it will also place the metadata you selected in the speaker notes section. Once this is done, you can add transitions, music, whatever you want. Keynote WILL let you export the completed slideshow to a variety of formats: go to FILE > EXPORT and choose the format you need / prefer.

9 - Done. :)