What is Adobe Captivate?

Adobe Captivate is a productivity tool for creating elearning content, such as interactive videos, virtual reality walkthroughs, screencasts, and multi-module courses. Adobe programs are used worldwide by creative professionals across industries. In this overview, you’ll learn more about what Adobe Captivate is, what it can do, who uses it, and how to learn it so you can determine how to add this skill to your professional toolbox.

What Can You Do with Adobe Captivate?

Adobe Captivate is a powerful tool for creating elearning materials in various mediums. Adobe Captivate supports the creation of interactive videos, virtual reality walkthroughs, screencasts, multi-module courses, and quizzes. These tools are ideal for training specialists needing to create onboarding tools for new employees, along with virtual skill or safety demonstrations.

Adobe Captivate is also extremely useful for creating online courses. Virtual walkthroughs can demonstrate practical skills, and screencasting can simulate software use. Multi-model branches allow courses to organize lessons and follow each training session with interactive quizzes. This makes Adobe Captivate ideal for any business wanting to create and sell online courses.

Lastly, anyone can use Adobe Captivate to make creative videos and presentations. Adobe Captivate's responsive design features ensure finished videos and projects are compatible with any device, including desktop, web, and mobile, ensuring viewability from anywhere. Virtual tours, screen captures, and interactive slideshows can make for dynamic visual media for usage in meetings or as marketing products.

How Do You Download Adobe Captivate? How Much Does it Cost?

Adobe Captivate can be downloaded from the official Adobe website for $33.99 a month. A free trial is also available. If you’re looking to save some money, Adobe Captivate can also be acquired as a one-time purchase through third-party retailers. These versions of Adobe Captivate likely lack online support features. They are also usually outdated. While an older version of Adobe Captivate can aid a beginner in learning its features, the software will lack aspects that could hold individuals back from becoming experts.

What Are the Benefits of Learning Adobe Captivate?

Adobe Captivate is a must if you’re in any profession requiring training or learning materials. The program is versatile, allowing users to create any elearning material, from interactive videos to multi-module courses. Adobe Captivate’s various templates allow beginners and program experts to develop training materials easily and quickly. 

Nearly any profession requires the creation of presentations for managers and stakeholders. Even if your job doesn’t involve the creation of training materials, you can still benefit from Adobe Captivate. Adobe Captivate has more features than Microsoft PowerPoint, allowing users to create more dynamic and interactive presentations.

If you’re interested in learning other Adobe programs, Adobe Captivate can be a good place to start. Its templates make the program easy for beginners, and its various features serve as a great example of everything achievable through Adobe programs.

Read more about why you should learn Adobe Captivate.

Adobe Captivate Careers

Adobe Captivate is used across industries by professionals requiring the ability to create multimedia projects. Marketers, for instance, can create a variety of videos with interactive elements to appeal to consumers on multiple platforms, from web to mobile and television. Graphic Designers can also take advantage of Adobe Captivate’s multimedia features for creating visually appealing videos and web elements.

Since Adobe Captivate mainly involves the creation of interactive videos, Video Editors can gain a lot of flexibility from the program’s features. Adobe Captivate allows Video Editors to add a variety of interactive elements to their projects, which can increase the audience engagement and retention of their videos. Similarly, Real Estate agents can use Adobe Captivate to upscale their property videos, allowing potential clients to virtually tour a home more engagingly than a flat video.

Adobe Captivate shines as a tool for Training Specialists, Instructional Designers, and elearning Developers. These professions revolve around developing training materials, which allows them to take full advantage of Adobe Captivate’s many interactive tools, including creating multi-model branched courses and quizzes. Adobe Captivate’s templates and asset library allows elearning solutions to be built quickly and easily.

How to Learn Adobe Captivate

There are a number of ways to learn Adobe programs. The most popular option includes live classes, which can be in-person or live online. Live classes offer engagement with an instructor that will answer a student’s questions in real time. However, in-person class options are often limited to locations nearest a student. Live online courses can be taken from anywhere with an internet connection and do their best to replicate the feel of in-person classrooms. They also don’t feature a commute, which can be time-consuming and costly.

A second option includes on-demand, asynchronous, or self-paced learning. This type of learning is best for students who prefer to learn at their own pace or have work or family obligations that prevent them from attending regularly scheduled classes. Students have more freedom to learn as they wish, but they lack an instructor or guidance, and self-motivation is required to progress through the material. 

Finally, students can learn through free seminars, online tutorials, guides, blog posts, or videos. These options are great for individuals wanting to learn the basics of Adobe Creative Suite. However, like other learning options, they don’t feature a proper instructor and will likely not be enough for someone wanting to learn Adobe Creative Cloud to advance their career. Free tutorials can also be outdated. 

Read the full guide on how to learn Adobe.

A Brief History of Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate is a program that changed many hands during its early years. It began in 2001 as Flash Cam, a screen recording utility created by Nexus Concepts. Flash Cam was acquired by eHelp Corporation and redeveloped into an elearning creation tool released as Robo Demo in May 2002. Robo Demo included several new features such as Powerpoint and AVI import, interactive text and menu boxes, and JavaScript and Flash support.

RoboDemo was acquired by Macromedia and renamed Macromedia Captivate in 2004. Macromedia added more features, such as a timeline, audio editing, simulation recording, and customizable quizzes. Adobe Systems finally acquired the program in 2005 and named it as we know it today. Adobe continued to improve the program over the years, including more recording options, customizations, templates, widgets, and libraries.

Adobe Captivate 5, launched in 2010, marked a major change in the program as it was entirely rewritten rather than reiterating from a previous version. This allowed for a new user interface that was similar to other Adobe products. The rewrite also included extended Microsoft PowerPoint support and video embedding capabilities. The program was available for both Mac and Windows operating systems for the first time.

Adobe Captivate continued to improve with each edition. Subsequent program releases added new features such as object rotation, drag-and-drop components, motion paths, and Fluid boxes. New editions also upgraded existing features such as enhanced quizzes, widgets, video recording, and PowerPoint support. Adobe Captivate 2019 was the first release to support the creation of virtual reality projects. 

Comparable Applications

Articulate Storyline is another elearning application made by Adobe. While the programs are similar in purpose and features, each has advantages and disadvantages. 

For starters, unlike Captivate, Storyline doesn’t have capabilities for creating virtual reality projects. Also, unlike Captivate, videos created in Storyline also aren’t responsive to screen sizes. So a project created on a desktop computer will look the same on mobile and be difficult to navigate. Storyline is a Windows-only application, whereas Captivate works on both Windows and Mac operating systems. 

On the flip side, Storyline’s interface is built more like PowerPoint, making it intuitive and easy to navigate. Captivate may require a bit of a learning curve since its interface is built similarly to other Adobe products. While both programs support importing slides from PowerPoint, Storyline has better capabilities in that PowerPoint slides are converted into Storyline elements that can be easily edited within the program. With Captivate, PowerPoint slides cannot be manipulated or edited within the program, requiring users to work back and forth between PowerPoint and Captivate if more work needs to be done on the PowerPoint slides. 

In terms of cost, Storyline is significantly more expensive at $1,099 a year with no monthly subscription available. Captivate costs $33.99 a month for a total of $407.88 a year. Both programs offer free trials and discounts for students and multi-user subscriptions.

If cost isn’t an issue, the main difference between the program lies in capabilities. If your elearning project relies heavily on PowerPoint slides, Storyline will be easier to work with. However, if you need virtual reality capabilities or responsive designs, Captivate is the better program. Overall, Captivate possesses greater technical ability. 

Learn Adobe with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

If you’re interested in getting started with Adobe Captivate, Noble Desktop offers an Intro to Adobe Captivate course that covers the fundamentals of the program. This course is ideal for beginners wanting to become comfortable with using and creating training materials from the program.

Like other Adobe programs, Captivate integrates with other Adobe software such as Photoshop and Illustrator. While Adobe Captivate is a powerful program on its own, its capabilities expand when used with other Adobe products. Noble Desktop’s Adobe Creative Cloud Bootcamp teaches many Adobe programs, including InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Adobe XD. Noble Desktop also offers bootcamps in individual Adobe programs. These courses are ideal if you want to master only one Adobe product rather than learn the whole suite. 

A Graphic Design Certificate is also available that teaches Adobe programs along with graphic design principles. Even if your chosen profession isn’t in the graphic design field, knowing basic graphic design principles can elevate the projects you create with Adobe Captivate and other Adobe programs to another level.

Key Insights

• Adobe Captivate is an elearning tool for creating interactive videos. 
• Adobe Captivate can create a variety of learning materials from online courses, virtual reality presentations, screen captures, quizzes, and software demonstrations.
• Articulate Storyline is the main competitor of Adobe Captivate, but it is not as technically robust, and its projects are not responsive to screen sizes. 
• Adobe Captive is used in any profession requiring the creation of training materials or interactive multimedia videos, including Realtors, HR Managers, Marketers, and Video Editors.
• You can receive comprehensive Adobe Captivate training through an in-person or live online course with Noble Desktop.