Copying slides to the clipboard as a bitmap

Captivate provides an easy way to copy a slide to the clipboard as a bitmap. You can then paste the bitmap into a graphics editing program (for example, Fireworks or PhotoShop), edit the slide, and then paste the slide back into Captivate. This is a useful feature, particularly if you don't have much time and need to make a small change to a slide.

For example, suppose your movie is nearly done when you discover that one slide, a screen shot of a web browser, contains an address line showing an internal company server address. To quickly solve the problem, copy the slide to the clipboard as a bitmap, open the bitmap in Macromedia Fireworks, "erase" the information in the address field by painting over it with the color white, save the image, and then, from Captivate, paste the image back into the movie as an image slide. Using this feature means you don't have to re-record the slide or the entire movie.

After you have edited the slide in a graphics program, the slide can be pasted in back into Captivate as a new image slide or as an image box. This gives you the flexibility to treat the edited image as a slide or as an object that can be added to one or more slides.

Note: When you copy a slide to the clipboard as a bitmap, only the slide and background are copied—any objects on the slide are not copied.

To copy a slide to the clipboard as a bitmap:

  1. Open a Captivate movie in Edit view.

  2. Select the slide that you want to copy as a bitmap.

  3. From the Edit menu, select Copy Slide to Clipboard as Bitmap.

  4. Open a graphics editing program and paste the slide into the program by pressing Control+V.

  5. Make any desired changes to the slide.

  6. Copy the image in the graphics program by pressing Control+C so the image is saved to the clipboard.

  7. Return to Captivate and, from the Edit menu, select Paste Image from Clipboard as Slide or Paste Image from clipboard as image box.

The new, updated slide or image is placed in the movie. If the original slide contains objects such as captions or highlight boxes, you can copy the objects to the new image slide before deleting the original slide.  

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