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Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Editing Screens in Macromedia Captivate
  3. Inserting New Images into Macromedia Captivate Projects
  4. Editing Slides That Contain Mouse Movement

Using Macromedia Captivate to Retouch Images in Recorded Demos and Simulations

Editing Screens in Macromedia Captivate

There are two ways you can make changes to the screens that make up your Macromedia Captivate project files:

  • Copy a background image and edit it in an image editor, such as Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004
  • Overlay a new graphic file on top of the portion of the screen you wish to alter

Retouching Macromedia Captivate Background Images in an External Image Editor

Being able to edit each of the background images that make up your Macromedia Captivate project files gives you an incredibly versatile working environment. For example, one of the projects I just finished involved creating a series of interactive simulated tasks for the e-commerce software application WA eCart developed by WebAssist. Having created a Macromedia Captivate project demonstrating how to install the software, I received an e-mail requesting that one of the screens should be altered because it displayed the software version number, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Original Screen with version number showing. Please note that I have added red circles to the image to show the text that I needed to change.

Figure 1. Original screen showing the software version number (I added red circles to the image to indicate what I needed to change)

(+) View larger

Because Macromedia Captivate enables you to copy the background image of a slide, altering a screen is incredibly simple:

  1. Select the slide you wish to edit.

    (Optional steps)

    Because you cannot undo pasting an image background in Macromedia Captivate, you may also want to do the following:

    1. Select Slide > Duplicate Slide3.
    2. Select the original slide and choose Slide > Hide Slide.
  2. Select Edit > Copy Background for your duplicated slide.
  3. Switch to an image editor such as Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004.
  4. Select File > New in your image editor and leave the default values.
  5. Select Edit > Paste.
  6. Change the image as you deem necessary.
  7. Save the file.
  8. Select the entire image and choose Edit > Copy. (If you're in Fireworks, make sure you've selected the Pointer tool.)
  9. Switch back to Macromedia Captivate.
  10. Select Edit > Paste as Background.
  11. Save the Macromedia Captivate file.

Using this copying slide background technique, I was able to completely remove all traces of "WA eCart 2.1.0" (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Amended screen without version number

Figure 2. Amended screen no longer shows the version number

(+) View larger

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