Presentation and Editing Software for Mac

[gung_hobo]

Hi,
For many years I managed most things necessary on a PC but hated it. Very fortuitously I got a Mac and absolutely adore it. I find it actually is intuitive (if that includes me it might not be a good thing fro Apple!!).

Anyway, for an interest that is not for work (but could be tied back in loosely in the future), I want to be able to create and edit presentations that would be made available via websites and intranet. Slides, photos, video. They would definitely be made available via Google and all its spawn, and in a Google Drive/as a resource for a hangout.

Life is too short for me to learn something absolutely brilliant but that will befuddle me (I've only had a smart phone for 3 years and I had to be dragged kicking etc.). Could kindly souls with a bit more knowledge suggest some possible programs that will not bankrupt Soros? I will need to use Vector rather than Raster for some things and tie it in to widely available outlets (i.e. nothing really niche but I don't know exactly what yet).

I am not trying to take on Hollywood CGI but would like a basically competent multi-media presentation with the ability to bung a bit of music in so it does not look too Heath Robinson-ish.

If relevant I have a Canon camera that quality wise appears to be well ahead of what I want to do (18+Mega pixels) and that does video and sound quite well for amateur type things.

Many thanks in advance,

GH

 

[R0B]

It should have come with Keynote which is similar to Power Point. You can export as PDF or QuickTime movies to share with other.

 

[MrMemory]

Have a look at Apache Open Office, which freeware. It's a word processing app similar to MS Word, but also contains a presentation feature called Impress.

Apache OpenOffice - Official Site - The Free and Open Productivity Suite

The official home page of the Apache OpenOffice open source project, home of OpenOffice Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw and Base.

www.openoffice.org

Below is a demo for Impress.

 

[dogmeat]

Affinity Designer and Photo, both currently £34 each:

Affinity – Professional Creative Software

From the smoothest, fastest photo editing and graphic design software to the most powerful publishing software, Affinity apps are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with creative technology.

affinity.serif.com

Loads of tutorials on the YT:


ETA:

Don't be fooled by the price - Serif have been producing this type of software for decades and have refined their software over time.

I even use them myself now after years of Gimp and Inkscape.

ETA 2:

And if you need to do video editing, DaVinci Resolve Free Version:

DaVinci Resolve 17 | Blackmagic Design

 

[rgjbloke]

I haven’t had need to use it but keynote but it should do what you want. I use pages all the time and while it might not be as comprehensive as word, I’ve just written a seven page report on it effortlessly. The MacBook software is free with the machine and it is very good if seemingly slightly a little basic in comparison to the Microsoft stuff that you’ll pay several hundred pounds for.

Welcome to MacBooks. We started using them about four years ago. I use a MacBook Air mainly for word processing although I have used Adobe lightroom and photoshop on it and my son uses a MacBook Pro for all that plus he does a lot of software writing.

I’m wouldn’t go back to windows now. The MacBook operating system is easy to use and even with regular upgrades, it’s not a big learning exercise to get your head around a new interface which can be an unwelcome pain at my age.

A little more money to invest initially but the machines are solidly built and do last. You might have to change the battery after a couple of years. It depends on the usage and also how you use it. A tip is to regularly let the battery run right down before you recharge it rather than continuously just topping it up.

We also have a large screen iPad which was brought to enable us to do customer presentations onsite. We haven’t had the opportunity to use it for that yet but in the meantime, I find it very nice to use as my own personal iPad. Expensive though.

As I’ve already said, we wouldn’t go back to a windows system now or to ms dos based laptops or whatever they call them now.

 

[R0B]

Affinity Designer and Photo, both currently £34 each:
....

I use Affinity Designer as a replacement for Adobe Illustrator. It's very good and I prefer it to my old copy of Illustrator that won't work on a 64bit Mac anymore.

 

[bobthebuilder]

Went Mac a decade ago and mostly just use the Mac packages; Pages, Numbers, Keynote. I do all our own marketing content; videos, product information sheets, e-books, social media posts, website content.

I use Inkscape in place of Adobe Illustrator. It’s free and does everything I need. For video editing I mostly use iMovie for editing, then upload to Promo to put text on and Video Caption Maker to put spoken caption on to it. iMovie can do both, but the font and branding options are limited.

Canva is my absolute go to for producing graphics and images for social media and the website.

Have a look a Designerr for producing finished downloadable content. It’s massively powerful, but not cheap (iirc about £20 a month). You can pull in content from websites, Word / Pages, images in any form, logos etc etc and knock them in to a very tidy e-book or similar. I just take out a subscription for a month and knock out a years content