Adobe Captivate 8 - How to Remember Project Custom Swatches

Question

Is there a way to replace default swatches with custom swatches 'permanently', for example by embedding them in a template? I've created a template with my custom swatches but it doesn't seem to be a solution. Captivate loads the swatches panel with default swatches each time I create a new file or open an existing project.

Answer 1

I know, the whole color work flow in Captivate is bit mysterious, and most users don't bother about it.  The swatches panel was almost not used in CP7. I ended up by creating my own swatches in the scratch area of a project if colors were important, and I believe consistency in colors is important, don't misunderstand me.
Now it has improved a little bit, but I'm still trying to figure out the best work flow. You are right, I should expect to be able to save my swatches panel either with a workspace, or within the Preferences, or if you want within the Object Style manager. But Captivate has not even a foreground/background color button, it used to have two color buttons in the vertical toolbox that they banned from the present version
With each new project I try to find out a better way to manage colors, but still didn't succeed. And you are very rare, there are almost never questions about color management. Glad I'm not alone anymore.
What I'm doing at this moment, is transfer 10 colors to a theme color palette from the swatches panel. Those 10 colors are also bit of a mystery. Some are used in the provided themes, some not. And the names don't correspond always with the objects they are used for (Subtitle is not used for subtitles, to give one example). But those theme colors, when applied to the theme, will result in changes of some object styles (not all...another question mark) and they are mostly available when a color dialog box pops up. I say mostly, they will for Fill, Stroke and Gradient colors, for some learning interactions but not for all. The 'tints' are based on the theme colors, color 4 is a theme color, color 5 is darker, the first three are lighter. That provides me in total 50 tints based on the theme colors.
A template is really a bridge too far, at least if you use that word as it is meant in Captivate for a cptl file, because I see the word template used for a lot of files, even for themes and almost never for a template.
Your theme color palette will be saved in the workspace, can be reused for any theme. And if you edit also the Object styles, those that are not yet adapting the to theme colors and the Skin you can save that theme as a custom theme and reuse it later for any project, of the same kind. Because themes for responsive projects can be used for normal projects but not the other way.
Sorry for that long answer, still not satisfied with it, just the result of my personal exploration. A blog post about that is not really worthwhile since almost nobody seems to care about colors. When consulting or repairing projects I do see more overridden styles than normal ones.
Lilybiri