Does anyone here use Keynote for editing photo slideshows?

I don't have a Mac any more. But I thought Keynote was one of the better applications I used. It is very similar to MS PowerPoint, but has some really nice animation options. It allows importing sound. It is not really a photo editing program, and I don't think it allows for zooming in. I think what you're looking for is something like Final Cut, iMovie, or other non-Apple editors. Keynote does allow transferring to a CD, but I always had compatibility problems when others tried to run it. It could have been my end.

I'm not aware of the capabilities of Keynote. I use Fotomagico which is bundled with Roxio Toast. Fotomagico can do all of the things you seem to be looking for as well as adding titling and outputting files in 1080P HD, which can then be burned by Toast to a standard DVD or BluRay disc. To burn BluRay you have to have a burner attached to your Mac.

Keynote works great for putting together portfolios, photo essays, projects, etc. You can import music to run with your presentation, but there's no provision for precision timing with individual slides. Unfortunately, that needs to be done trial and error with the timing of your slides. Here's a project I put together with Keynote that's accessible from the web. Your presentation can also be burned to CD as a Quicktime movie.

Brad...that's fine work. The split screen is a big plus. Do you do a lot of this?
Another resource is www.soundslides.com (see portfolio examples).

I do a great deal of work with Keynote. It can do all you want and much much more, but the 'more' gets complex and time-consuming, but the end result can be spectacular. One caveat - Kn's sound handling is abysmal - it appears to use the main processor for sound and the graphics processor for images but they dont run in sync so your sound can vary wildly, from play to play, and from machine to machine, and worryingly vary even more when output to Quicktime. This is only important if you want exact sync of sound to action on screen otherwise its fine.

FotoMagico has much better sound implementation and can auto-sync slide sequences to match a soundtrack length, and it can 'almost' sync sound with image transitions BUT in reality it cant, despite FM advertizing that it can. In discussion with the FM dev team they have admitted to me that it cant consistently stay in sync. However that said for non-critical sync work its really very very good, but it does struggle with any complex image stuff - whereas Kn can actually do 'layers' of sorts with stuff all piling up on one slide to create the desired effect.

Both programmes have their strengths and I use Fm for some bits where I want to quickly match images to a soundtrack, pan and zoom on images, then output it as HD video and drop it back into Kn to do complex bits, and vice-versa - best of both worlds.

(Brad - excellent piece of work).

Ps Steve if you need any more advice just ask. But I think Fm might suit you better as the learning curve is much easier.

Thanks a lot guys, your answers have been very usefull, i'll look into fotomagico and soundslides.