How can I customize a default caption style to make the fill a solid color?

[Magenta Moon]

In Captivate 8, under File>Publish Settings>Quiz>Default Labels, I have created new default caption styles for the Failure, Success and Hint captions. I successfully changed the fonts of all three captions, and I imported a solid color bitmap for the fill (all three will have the same fill to match the slide background). However, when I select the new style on my slide, the fill does not appear. All three new captions show the correct text, but on a transparent background.

In the properties panel, when I open the "Caption Type" drop-down menu, the name of my new caption style appears. However, whereas the standard Captivate styles listed as yellow, blue and green show a tiny image of how they look to the left of the style name in the menu, my new style names do not show any corresponding pictures.

Can anyone tell me what I missing - why my solid color bitmap is not being used to fill my new caption style?

[Lilybiri]

First to be sure: are you talking about Shapes or about Captions? Can you check in the Preferences, Defaults what is used for SFH (Success/Failure/Hint)?

[Magenta Moon]

Hi, Lilybiri! Captions specifically. For example: I have created a new default success style that is Arial, green font, and I want to define its type (which I am also calling "fill") as a bitmap I have created called F5F1DF (a solid light tan color). As you can see in the first screenshot below, the sample text at bottom left shows the new style is appearing in the correct font; however, when I select "F5F1DF" from the drop-down menu, the type is not reflected in the sample text. If I select a pre-defined type for the fill, however, it is reflected in the sample text (see the second screenshot below). Do you have any idea why my F5F1DF bitmap is not being pulled in as the caption type when I select it from the Caption Type menu?

[Lilybiri]

Please, can you check the Preferences?  I have first to know if SFH are set to shapes or captions. It has no sense to change the default SFH caption styles if shapes are used, which is the Default setting in CP9.

[Magenta Moon]

I apologize for not answering your question the first time. Thank you for sticking with me and following up for clarification. I was confused, because I do not show that option in my Preferences dialogue, as you can see below. Would the same information be somewhere else? I could not find it, but I probably do not know where to look.

[Lilybiri]

You are on CP8, not CP9 but your Preferences screenshot is not for CP8. For me in CP8 it looks like this:

[Magenta Moon]

I only have Captivate 8 open, but unfortunately I have version 8.0.0.145, and I think the option for using smart shapes for SFH captions was added in 8.0.1. (see https://helpx.adobe.com/captivate/using/text-captions.html#Convert%20captions%20into%20smart%20shape...). Do you have version 8.0.1 or later? If so, that may be why we are seeing different options. I know you are a well seasoned Captivate expert, so you still may have some ideas I could try, and I appreciate any direction or suggestions. Also, I am trying to find some answers online, and if I do, I will post them here. This has really stumped me.

[Lilybiri]

Please upgrade ASAP because a lot of bugs were fixed. That patch was release one year ago. You may be correct that SFH couldn't be shapes before 8.0.1.242. Shapes can be totally defined inside Captivate.

It has been a lot of years since I created custom captions, too cumbersome now that shapes appeared. Did you follow the guidelines for captions? For each caption you need quite a lot of files as you can see in the Gallery\Captions: for each of them you need a FCM and an image file.

[Magenta Moon]

You mentioned guidelines for captions. Does that refer to a document or article that I can access online?

[Lilybiri]

It should be somewhere, maybe in an old Help document? I have to google myself, since version 5 I never used that work flow anymore, totally switched to shapes.

https://helpx.adobe.com/captivate/using/text-captions.html#creating_custom_text_caption_styles

Creating Custom Text Caption Styles - Adobe 65029940 - Captivate - PC Using Manual [Page 65]

DesignEasy: Creating captions in Photoshop for Adobe Captivate projects

[Magenta Moon]

That first link is especially helpful; I feel like I have some direction. Lilybiri, THANK YOU for the time you have spent helping me on this.