Using PowerPoint for Captivate design work?

[NewMavens]

I'm working on converting from the Articulate world to the Captivate world. I'm intrigued by Captivate's feature set (native Mac support is the key selling point to me, the the more rapid release cycle and subscription pricing are also reasons for my switch), though I will say the community does not appear to be as robust as what Articulate has going. Step up your game, Adobe!

That said, I'm finding the visual design aspects of Captivate to be quite clunky. PowerPoint (or Articulate Storyline, which closely mimics PowerPoint) seems much better suited to the design element of the course development process. Are there any significant downsides to doing the bulk of the course's visual design work in PowerPoint, then importing to Captivate and finishing the development there?

[Lilybiri]

I will not discuss about the UI, preferred myself the closer to Adobe UI look of Captivate 7 which was certainly very different from the MS UI (not a MS-lover here). It is another environment, takes time to get used to would not say it is less suited for design. Will not discuss the 'poor community' by Adobe neither, at least Adobe Community is not censored by members of Adobe Staff.

But I strongly recommend never to rely on Powerpoint if  you want to create a Captivate eLearning course! When imported into Captivate each PPT slide is converted to a movie slide and you have no control whatsoever over the objects anymore. It is very bad practice to start with PPT which is a (good, when used by a skilled presenter) presentation tool, not an eLearning tool.

Maybe you missed the great roundtripping functionality between Captivate and Illustrator, Photoshop and Audition? Do you realize the importance of the Library (and each project Library can be used in any other project)? Themes are partially based on the Themes used in PPT. You have Rulers and Guides, for normal projects in px, for responsive projects you have the choice between pixels and %.

[Erik Lord]

PPT has had a long time and a much larger user base to refine its design capabilities. I agree it's overall a good bit ahead of Captivate in that regard...but CP's features aren't bad either, it may more be an issue of knowing what's available and how to access the features.

I do agree with Lieve - where PPT may be a good storyboard tool, it's NOT a good way to build your CP piece...due to the way CP 'imports' the project and the need to make all edits in the PPT itself then re-sync.

Don't do it.

If you can't recreate in CP, copy/paste the elements (or better process, though not better time, save the elements as individual graphics, then import) from PPT to CP.

At worst, screenshot your PPT items then paste into CP. With the image editing tools, especially being able to select a transparent color, you can pretty much duplicate what is designed in PPT.

[NewMavens]

Thanks for both your feedback. I have not tried the Illustrator round-tripping as I do not have a $600/year CC license and am loathe to get one as I am using other Mac-based tools that I own and find better than the Adobe alternatives in many ways (Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo are both fantastic). If Adobe offered some sort of subscription eLearning suite I might be tempted, but for now simultaneous subscriptions for both Captivate and the CC suite are overkill.

While PowerPoint is not a stellar application by any means, I have over the years figured out how to coax almost anything out of it. Captivate is far more cumbersome, often involving several steps to accomplish what I can do in PP with a simple right-click. Perhaps most maddening to me was the fact an image crop opens the tool in a new window. I wanted to crop an overlying image to the edges of an underlying shape, but the crop tool in Captivate didn't seem to allow that. No problem in PP, difficult in Captivate.

I will spend more time in Captivate and will surely find most of the workarounds I need, but I worry I won't ultimately have complete control of the visual look and feel to the level that even the somewhat-primitive (visual design-wise) PowerPoint can give me. Is Articulate Storyline better from this particular aspect? Probably.

[RodWard]

Storyline is indeed more like PowerPoint to work with and many people feel it is simpler to use.  I've used both tools but find I tend to run into limitations with Storyline when you need to do some things that Captivate excels in. 

I do agree that PowerPoint's graphical editing and drawing tools are still currently better than Captivate. But it's good to remember that PowerPoint is primarily a presentation authoring tool, not an e-learning authoring tool. 

Some people prefer the MS style interface of PowerPoint, others feel more comfortable with Captivate.  Many companies like Articulate saw the potential to use PPT as a starting point and went in the direction of starting their authoring tools as plugins for PowerPoint that added the bells and whistles necessary to create e-learning.  Adobe has gone a different direction with their interface so that people familiar with their other products (Flash, Photoshop, Dreamweaver) would find it felt more familiar.  (They also have more functionality delivered in the interface and that's what tends to make it too complex for some people.)

You can do most things in either tool, but each one has features the other lacks. So you DO need to be very careful when selecting the authoring tool that you are not painting yourself into a corner where you will find that it cannot deliver what you (or your client) want.

At the end of the day, one you are familiar with the tools, I find the interface becomes less important than what you can do with the available functionality.  I generally recommend to clients that they allow me to use Captivate because overall I find it has more 'headroom' for advanced functionality.  But if you're not worried about taking your e-learning to the max, it's not that important which tool you use.