Turning Logos White in Keynote
So you want to throw a couple logos on a slide, and you’ve got the good sense to try and make sure all of those zany colors and shapes don’t compete with your brand. Great for you. Trouble is, a lot of companies don’t want you messing with their logos, and generally don’t make it easy for you find one-color versions of their precious logos that they spent thousands (or 99’s) of dollars on (some just make it downright impossible). Too bad for them, because it’s pretty easy, and I do it all the time. Here’s the simple process that I use to make logos white, or greyed-out in Keynote.
TL;DR
Step 1: LMGTFY
Sometimes you get lucky and the single-color version of the logo is just waiting their for you online. Weirdly, I have to explain this step a lot, but this covers you roughly 80% of the time. Just do a google image search for “<company> logo white.”
Then, use the nifty image filters and make sure you filter for “transparent” colored images. Did that work for you? Awesome; you’re done, just drag it into Keynote because mindblowingly copy and paste doesn’t always work from Safari.
No dice? Ok, on to the next step then.
Step 2: Find a transparent version
Since the brand department didn’t make it easy for you, you’re going to have to just settle for a transparent image. Using the same filters above, just find a hi-res, transparent version of the logo and drop that into Keynote. You can also skip the filtering process by searching for “<company> logo png” which searches for a .png file which is likely but not always on a transparent background. Why not settle for one with a white background baked in? Well, you could, but then you can only use it on white slides and for re-coloring, not to mention placing it next to other logos it will be a pain, so just try and avoid it. If you can’t find a version with a transparent background, don’t worry, just try to find the highest-resolution version you can find. If you can’t find a hi-res version, then your end result will just suck. Sorry, try emailing the company marketing department or see if you can find a vector version. More on that later…
Step 3: Cut that out
Keynote 6 introduced a nifty feature called “Instant Alpha.” It’s really good. It’s quicker than photoshop for doing some basic background removal, but when you have a very detailed logo, or a low-res logo, or one on a messy background, things get weird. So go through and make sure that you knock out any parts of the logo that you don’t want turning full-white. You’ll quickly realise in the next step which parts I mean.
Step 4: Brazilian blow-out
This is the “Magic” part. Now that your logo is cleaned up, click on the little Adjustments icon in the Image inspector. At the top, below the Histogram, drag the middle (grey) slider all the way to the left. Then drag the far right (white) slider all the way to the left. You may have to wiggle it around as Keynote is freaking out right now because it’s trying to round some crazy numbers and is probably making your logo flicker black and white. Don’t worry, it’s just one of the many bugs in Keynote.
Step 5: Fine-tuning
To get your logo truly white, you may have to max out the Exposure and Contrast sliders as well. This is also your opportunity to make the logo a nice grey, simply by sliding the Contrast slider to the left a bit. From here, you may have to go back and ajdust which parts of the logo you mask out with Instant Alpha, or adust the crop, or even adjust the opacity of the logo under the “Style” tab. Either way, you now have a lifelong skill that you can use to impress your friends, pick up someone at a bar, or secure a multi-million dollar investment.
