Custom Image Placeholder shapes in Captivate

[Robb Nemo]

I'm working on a captivate project based on an existing PowerPoint presentation which requires different shaped image placeholders i.e circular, square with one rounded corner, custom shapes etc. I know it's possible in PowerPoint, but is this possible in captivate and, if it is, how do I do it? 

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

Answer is positive.  Smartshapes are available as placeholder objects on the master slides. That include eventually custom created shapes (they are in a separate category). If you want the shapes filled with an image, that is possible as well, and you'll be able to replace the image in the shape on slides based on that master slide.

[Robb Nemo]

Thank you Lilibiri for responding. That works perfectly thank you, although editing the smartshapes is a bit fidley when it comes to the curves! 

Final question - Can the default caption in the various Text Placeholders (Title, Subtitle, Text Caption) be changed so, for instance, change the wording "Type the caption text here" to "Add Caption"?

[Lilybiri]

Shape curves are Bezier curves, they are based on the same workflow as with the Pen tool in Photoshop and Illustrator, but lack all the Pen tools of those applications. An old pain for me, I have given up asking for those tools after a decade.

Bad new: you cannot change the default text in the Caption placeholders, sorry.

[Robb Nemo]

Thank you again for responding. It comes as no great surprise that I can't change the caption text. I trwled through all of the menus but could only see the options for modifying the default question text. Captivate, although great at certain things,  seems to fall behind in a lot of what would seem like fairly basic functionality considering the resources available in the other Adobe products. I can't help thinking that a dynamic link to the rest of the Adobe family would help solve a lot of the frustrations.

Thanks again for all of your assistance.

[Lilybiri]

What is basic functionality depends on your needs. Personally I don't bother a lot about the text in the placeholders. I fully agree with your regret that any link with the Adobe brand UI and any collaboration with other Adobe applications (like the wonderful roundtripping with Photoshop in Classic Captivate) have been deprecated. We still have no access to the CC Libraries neither, even worse, projects have no Libraries anymore. That was the case with StoryLine (no Library) and one of the many reasons why I preferred Captivate (Classic) over SL.

[Robb Nemo]

I'm very much of a graphic designer who has started to inlude Captivate in my arsenal of tools, so I do miss the design flexibility that I'm accustomed to in other Design software. 

[Lilybiri]

eLearning is not exactly design software. However, I am a Photoshop user since almost 3 decades, and I love the roundtripping with PS in Captivate Classic. Have a look at my blog post:

https://blog.lilybiri.com/roundtripping-with-adobe-photoshop-in-2020

Being a musician, I also use Audition all the time from within Captivate. Roundtripping with Illustrator and Animate could use some improvements, so I was very sad with the new version 12.