Creating a PowerPoint (or Keynote) presentation from iPhoto album contents

[tvisher]

I'm trying to take an iPhoto album and create a Powerpoint 2008 (or Keynote) presentation with 1 slide per image with the iPhoto title preserved in the title of the slide.

Like:

+---------------+
| |
| +----+ +----+ |
| | | | | |
| +----+ +----+ |
| img1 img2 |
| |
+---------------+

v
v

+---------------+
| |
| +----+ |
| | | |
| +----+ |
| |
| img1 |
| |
+---------------+

+---------------+
| |
| +----+ |
| | | |
| +----+ |
| |
| img2 |
| |
+---------------+


The images will have to be resized to fit within the content area of the images.

I've tried a few things, none of which have worked.

1. Automator

Workflow: Ask for Photos -> Create Image Slide

Fails with a Can't get master slide, with whatever value I put in the Master box.

2. Straight applescript

tell application "iPhoto"
set presentation_photos to (get image path of photos of current album)
end tell

tell application "Keynote"
make image slides presentation_photos
end tell

That fails with a some parameter is missing for make image slides.

I'm pretty inexperienced with applescript so I'm not sure how to proceed.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[hayne]

I think the Keynote format is XML-based and documented, so the easiest way might be to wrote a script (AppleScript, or shell script, etc) that creates the Keynote ".key" file.

[tw]

for the automator workflow to work, you need to use the Make New Keynote Presentation action first, then use the Ask For Photos and Create Image Slide actions. make sure to disable the input on the Ask For Photos action otherwise you might get an error.

[tvisher]

That's certainly an option. I can't find the documentation though. I found a few sites with broken links, but nothing that worked.

Do you have a link to that?

[hayne]

Here's an Apple doc about the Keynote format:
http://developer.apple.com/appleapplications/keynote-apxl.html
There may be others on the Apple developer web site.