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BettyCole
Known Participant
October 19, 2015
Question

Custom theme does not apply correctly to new projects - Captivate 8.01

  • October 19, 2015
  • 1 reply
  • 267 views

I am using Captivate 8.01 and trying to create a custom theme.  I modified an existing theme and saved it with a new theme title.  When I open a new project and choose the new theme from the menu, the colors go haywire.  My dark blue header bar is tan, my light blue content frames are bright red (neither color is used in my custom theme).

After reviewing the Colorful 2015 and Color Themes blogs by Lilybiri (great work and extremely helpful!), I customized the theme colors to match the theme and went back to ensure that the fill and stroke colors now referenced the project color theme swatch.  When I try to apply this new theme with custom theme colors to a new project, I get the same color issues.

Since I am going to redo my custom theme work from the beginning, I was hoping for help on the correct order of actions to take.

1-Select a default theme.

2-Create a custom theme color palette.

3-Modify the master slides with the new colors (selected from the palette), logos, layouts, etc.

4-Save the theme with a new title.

In the default Clean Blue theme (that I am using as a basis), I noticed that there are object styles that are used differently - for example, the title bar uses [Default Smart Shape Style] and the content frames use +[Default Smart Shape Style].  These have different fill and stroke colors.  Would it be better to create a new object style for each shape used (e.g., one for the title bar and one for the content frame)?  Do the object styles need to be in brackets [xxx]?

Luckily, I am just beginning this project and only have one lesson created as a demonstration.

Thanks for any and all help!

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Lilybiri
Lilybiri
Legend
October 19, 2015

I'm sorry, tried to help by finding some logic in the way themes and theme color palettes are created, but it is not very consistent as I mentioned in those blog posts. Do not refer to the 10 names of the colors in the theme color palette, because they simply have no meaning at all. I really wished it would be easier.

You have to create each object style needed, as well and I would recommend to give them significant names. You can have different shape styles indeed, just like you have different caption styles. The normal way would be first to create the object styles, then use them on the master slides. But since the color use is so confusing and you have to start with a default theme, it is not so easy.

Since new themes appeared now in CP9, with different use of the color themes, some of them even adding now transitions which cause new issues, I gave up trying to find a logical way to create a theme.

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BettyColeAuthor
Known Participant
October 19, 2015

Thanks for the help.  I will try by creating the object styles and then applying these to the master slides.

I followed your previous guidance and have my own cheat-sheet list of the 10-color palette (using 1-10, not the CP naming convention) for my theme.  Will be sure that my object updates will use only the colors from the palette ... hopefully this will help.

Thanks!

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