September 15, 2010

Background Image editing

A background image sure enhances the look of a slide any day.  Captivate has always supported background images, so what’s new with Adobe Captivate 5?

Adobe Captivate 5 now allows editing of an image which is inserted as a background. By editing, I mean you can apply some basic filters and do some transitions.

All the edit operations for a background image are available in the Resize/Crop dialog. For large images (images that have a resolution greater than that of the project), this dialog opens up on the selection of an image – similar to the behavior seen in Adobe Captivate 4.

The highlight in Adobe Captivate 5 is that the background images can be now edited at any stage later by using the edit button in the slide PI. Thus, for any small image inserted as a background the editing can be done.

The picture below shows the dialog.

The controls in this dialog are mostly self explanatory. However let me explain the exact behavior of apply and reset controls.

 

Apply All Button

When you want the same edit operations to be applicable to all the images, use this button to do the tedious task for you.

Reset All Button

This will reset all the changes made to all the images.

These set of edit operations were always available for an image object through an image edit window. In Adobe Captivate 5, the same is available in the PI. This makes it more accessible for the user. The edit operations are available as long as the image object is selected.

Personally, my favorite is to use some hue and transparency on a background image. It gives a rich look to the slide as you can see below.

Posted by Maanasa Srinivasulu5:59 PM
  • Tina Abplanalp

    My problem is that I have templates built from Captivate 3 that have some background images that were smaller than the slides (1024 by 768). On conversion to Captivate 5, those backgrounds do not render properly. A color bar at the top of the graphic appears to be multicolored where it was a solid color in Captivate 3. I’ve pinpointed the problem to what appears to be the way that the graphic is stretched in Captivate 5. I decided to create a new blank slide When I try to recrete the background using the same graphic (smaller than 1024 by 768) that was used in other parts of the file. When I check the Edit background, “Fit to stage” has been selected but a white border has been placed all around the graphic on the slide. The graphic no longer stretches. Unfortunately, we have hundreds of courses and most of them need to be updated. Changes in the background put all of our text boxes out of line. We have installed the patch for Cap. 5. HELP!. What is going on!!

    • Maanasa Srinivasulu

      Hi Tina, Can you please send across your project for us to investigate further.
      One issue with upgrading of projects is that if an image is edited in Cp3 and is upgraded, we cannot guarantee the same visual effect in Cp5. This is because the libraries used for image editing are different in Cp3 and Cp5. However, more about your specific problem can be said only after seeing your project.

  • Herminica Nobleta

    My Problem is that i want my one image to become the background of all my slides. I would like to know how.?,, Please, reply thank you so much

    • Vish

      Hello Herminica,

      You can apply that image as background for the Master Slide. To do that, go to Window>Master Slides, click the browse button under background option in Properties Panel, select import and choose the image. Later, select the slide for which you want this as background, select the master slide you just created from the properties panel. Hope this helps.

      Thanks,
      Vish

  • adryiana

    wow , its so fantastic ..

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