Slides and layers

A show is a list of slides, and each slide is a stack of layers: cameras, screens, windows, images, video, text, shapes, titles and animated graphics. If you've built a deck in Keynote, you already know the layout.

The editor window

• Slide navigator on the left. Numbered thumbnails of every slide. Drag to reorder, Control-click for Duplicate and Delete, and use the + button at the bottom to add a slide. A small badge on a thumbnail shows its transition.
• Canvas in the middle. The selected slide, where you place and edit layers. The toolbar's Zoom menu sets the scale (Fit, or 25% to 200%).
• Inspector on the right, with three tabs in the toolbar: Format, Animate and Document.

The toolbar's View menu switches between Navigator and Slide Only, and shows or hides the inspector.

The three inspectors

Add slides

Click Add Slide in the toolbar and choose:

• Blank Slide, Full-Screen Camera or Title Slide.
• Duplicate Current Slide. Duplicates keep their layers paired with the original, which is what Magic Move needs.
• Insert Slides from Template…, which adds a template's slides after the selected one.
• Import PDF or Keynote… (see Import a deck).

⇧⌘N (File ▸ New Slide) adds a blank slide. ⌘D (Edit ▸ Duplicate) duplicates the selected layers, or the slide when no layer is selected.

Add layers

The toolbar has a button for each kind of layer. New layers go on the selected slide, on top of the stack.

Titles, backgrounds and particles

The Graphics menu has four sections:

• Titles: Lower Third, Name Strap, Quote, Chapter Card and Headline. Each is a group of ordinary text and shape layers with its builds already set up. Insert one, then edit the words like any other text.
• Backgrounds: Flowing Color, Bokeh, Light Leaks, Retro Grid, Gradient, Sunbeams, Stripes and Film Grain. They fill the canvas and go to the back of the stack.
• Particles: Snow, Dust, Confetti and Embers. They're transparent and go to the front, over the content they fall across.
• Web: Web Graphic from Folder…, an animated HTML graphic. See Web graphics.

Select a background or particle layer to change its style, colors, speed, and amount, size or scale in the Format inspector. They animate live in the program output. Navigator thumbnails show a still frame.

Text

A text layer's Style tab has quick text styles, plus Fill (a box behind the text, with padding), Border and Shadow. A shadow or border keeps text readable over camera and video. The Text tab holds the font, size, color, capitalization, alignment, character and line spacing, and Shrink text to fit.

Images and video

Images are stored inside the show file. Videos are linked by path, so keep them where they are, or use Relink Media if you move them. A video's inspector shows the file, a Replace button that keeps its settings, a Repeat setting (Loop, Play Once, Hold Last Frame or Play Once, Then Hide) and Mute in program.

Mask, crop and corners

Cameras, screens, windows, images and video have a Scale setting (Fill or Fit), a Mask (Rectangle, Circle or Squircle) and Crop values for each edge. Crop trims the source before it's fitted, so you can hide a menu bar or zoom into a region. A rectangle mask gets a corner Radius in the Style tab, next to Opacity and effects.

Select and move on the canvas

• Click a layer to select it. ⇧-click or ⌘-click adds or removes layers. Drag on an empty area to select with a marquee.
• ⌥-click selects the next layer down, to reach one that's covered.
• Drag to move. Layers snap to the slide's edges and center and to other layers, with guides. Hold ⌘ while dragging to turn snapping off.
• Drag a handle to resize. Hold ⇧ to keep the proportions of one layer. With several layers selected it's the reverse: they keep proportions unless you hold ⇧.
• Arrow keys nudge the selection by 1 point, or 10 points with ⇧. Delete removes it.
• Control-click a layer for Cut, Copy, Paste, Group, stacking order, Hide and Delete.

Arrange

Select one or more layers and open the Arrange tab in the Format inspector.

• Back, Front, Backward, Forward change the stacking order.
• Align: Left, Center, Right, Top, Middle, Bottom. One layer aligns to the slide; several align to each other.
• Distribute: Evenly Horizontally or Evenly Vertically, for three or more layers.
• Size and Position in points, with Constrain proportions.
• Center on Slide and Fill Slide.
• Group and Ungroup, the layer's Name, and Hide on slide.

Rotate, tilt and distort

With one layer selected, Arrange also has:

• Rotate: type an angle, or drag the rotate knob on the canvas. Hold ⇧ while dragging the knob to snap.
• Distort: turn it on, then drag the four corners freely on the canvas. You can also ⌘-drag any corner handle without turning Distort on. This is how you fit a video onto a screen in a device photo.
• Tilt X, Tilt Y, Perspective, Skew X and Skew Y sliders, which set the corners for a 3D look. Moving a slider replaces corners you dragged by hand.
• Reset Rotation & Distortion puts the layer back flat.

Rotation and corners travel with Magic Move, so a layer can turn or straighten between two slides.

Groups

Select two or more layers and choose Arrange ▸ Group (⌥⌘G). A group moves and scales as one. Clicking any member selects the whole group; double-click a member to select just that layer, and the inspector offers Select Group to go back. Arrange ▸ Ungroup is ⇧⌥⌘G.

The layer list

Click an empty part of the canvas to see the slide in the Format inspector. Its Layers section lists every layer from front to back:

• Click a row to select it, ⇧-click to add.
• Drag rows to reorder. Drag a group's header row to move the whole group.
• Hover a row and click the eye to hide or show the layer. Hidden layers stay on the slide but don't appear in the output.

The same pane has the slide's name, background color and presenter notes. Notes appear in the presenter view, and Create Script from Notes… turns every slide's notes into a teleprompter script.

Copy and paste

⌘C, ⌘X and ⌘V work on layers, between slides and between shows. Images come along with the layers, and sizes scale if the other show has a different canvas.

• Pasting onto another slide keeps the layers paired with the originals, so Magic Move animates between them.
• Paste an image from another app and it becomes an image layer. Paste text and it becomes a text layer. Paste files copied in Finder to add them as media, or as slides if they're PDF or Keynote files.
• Copying a text layer also puts its text on the clipboard for other apps.

Templates

A new show opens with Choose a Template:

• Blank: one empty slide.
• Basic: a title, a camera with a lower third, and picture-in-picture.
• YouTube Creator: Starting Soon, Intro, Talking Head, Screen + Cam, Interview, Be Right Back and an End Screen.

Everything in a template is ordinary slides and layers you can edit. To add a template's slides to a show you're already working on, use Add Slide ▸ Insert Slides from Template….

Import a PDF or Keynote deck

1. Choose File ▸ Import PDF or Keynote… (⇧⌘I), or drop a .pdf or .key file onto the canvas.

2. Each page or slide becomes an ArcLight slide holding one image, fitted to the canvas. Keynote presenter notes come across as the slide's notes.

3. Add cameras, titles and transitions on top, like any other slide.

Relink Media

Videos and stinger clips are linked by path. If you move or rename them, ArcLight tells you when you open the show. Choose Relink… in that alert, or File ▸ Relink Media… at any time:

• The list shows every file the show uses and which are missing.
• Locate… points one entry at its new file. Replace… swaps a file that's still there.
• Search Folder… looks through a folder for all the missing files at once.

ArcLight remembers what each file contained. If the file you pick has different content, it asks before using it.