The Stage displays the layers of the currently selected slide. The layers can be freely zoomed, positioned, and rotated on the Stage. In addition to the slide layers, there may also be an optional background layer and an optional foreground layer (watermark). Both can be set by selecting the Settings... command from the Slideshow menu.

If animation is enabled for a slide, the stage is displayed twice. The start of the animation is displayed on the left side, and the finish of the animation is displayed on the right side. That way you can quickly drag around the layers to create the desired animation effect.

Dragging files from the Finder or from the media browser in the Sidebar adds new layers to the currently selected slide:

• Image File - Adds a new image layer to the currently selected slide. If the ⌥ key is pressed, the layer below the mouse highlights in yellow, and its image file will be replaced instead when you drop it.
• Movie File - Adds a new movie layer to the currently selected slide. If the ⌥ key is pressed, the layer below the mouse highlights in yellow, and its movie file will be replaced instead when you drop it.
• RTF Text File - Adds a new title layer to the currently selected slide. If the ⌥ key is pressed, the layer below the mouse highlights in yellow, and its title will be replaced instead when you drop it.
• Dragging an image or movie file to a placeholder layer of a snippet replaces the media file of that layer. It highlights in yellow, without the need to press the ⌥ key.

You can position, zoom, and rotate items on the stage in several different ways:

• Click on an image, movie, or title layer to select it. The item displays a thin white outline and four resizing handles at the corners to indicate that it is selected. This item will also be selected in the Storyboard or Timeline.
• Drag the layer around on the Stage to position it.
• Click on one of the resizing handles at the corners and drag to resize the layer. Not that this modifies both the position and zoom values.
• Use the jog wheels at the bottom of the Stage to change the zoom or rotation values of the selected layer.
• Optionally, you can also enter the zoom and rotation value numerically in the text fields above the jog wheels.
• Press the ⌥ key and click on a layer and drag up/down to change the zoom value.
• Press the ⌘ key and click on a layer and drag around the center to rotate it.
• Click just outside a layer’s boundary and drag to rotate the layer.

As image, movie, or title layers are positioned, zoomed, or rotated on the Stage, guidelines will appear to help you align the items. By default items snap to these guidelines:

• Green guidelines help to snap to the center or the edges of the Stage.
• Yellow guidelines help to align an image, movie, or title with itself - on the other side of the Stage. This is helpful when creating certain animation effects, e.g. a completely horizontal pan across an image, without any vertical motion and no zooming effect.
• Press the ctrl key to suppress automatic snapping to the guidelines.

When a selected layer has a mask, a switch will be displayed next to the zoom and rotation jog wheels. With this switch you can select whether the jog wheels affect the layer geometry, or the mask geometry. Switching from “Layer” to “Mask” turns the white selection frame to a blue selection frame - indicating we are now in mask editing mode. Using the jog wheels, or any dragging with the mouse now affects the mask, instead of the layer.

Right-click or ctrl+click on an item reveals a contextual menu. The commands in this contextual menu depends on whether an image, a movie, or title was clicked: