How do I reduce the size of the .bmp?

I believe the BMP files are going to increase the size of your project file (.cp). However, when you publish the Flash version (.swf), Captivate will compress the image and at least your end-users will enjoy a relatively small file size.

FYI - I don't believe Captivate supports anything but BMPs as backgrounds... when you merge a JPG into the background, I think it is converted to BMP, which would balloon the file size since BMP is not a compressed format as JPG is.

Short of ensuring that backgrounds are shared whenever possible per Rick's suggestion, there's not a whole lot you can do about the situation other than inserting your screenshots as foreground images that have been sent to back, which it sounds like you are already doing. Consider also locking the image on the timeline so you don't accidentally select it while working.

If you're really desperate, you can also try manually cropping out only the "changed" parts of screens and bringing those in as images over a larger "sent to back" image that's shared among multiple slides. Dunno if the file savings will be worth the hassle, but it should at least offer some reduction in size.

Hi austincookie and welcome to our community

You could try simply bypassing the step of making the current backgrounds blank. Then simply insert the bitmaps as images and merge each into the background. This should replace the existing backgrounds with your bitmaps.

Just a thought... Rick