"What, what? Pictures don't have audio right?"
You're right. They don't. And iMovie doesn't think they do either. If you select a still image in your project and bring up the Inspector, you only get two choices: Clip and Video. The audio tab doesn't appear like it does for video clips. At first glance, that seems right because pictures don't have an audio track to adjust.
But what if you are making a slideshow and you want your background audio to duck (get quiet) under a specific picture for dramatic effect? Well, without the audio tab and the ducking checkbox that comes with it, you'd have to go through the very tedious process of dragging in three overlapping copies of your song and cutting them with precision so that they just sound like one copy of the song that gets quiet at just that point.
OR YOU CAN USE THE SUPER-SPECIAL SECRET TRICK!
Alright, fine. It's not that special, but it is really useful. Hopefully you noticed that the above image of the Inspector is a little weird. It's showing you the audio adjustments panel, but there's no Audio tab to select. How did I do this, you ask?
The letter A. Just select the picture in question and hit A on your keyboard. The shortcut works with pictures, even if the Inspector doesn't think it should. So now you can adjust the background audio behind a still image. Duck away!
