This is the 12th post in the Articulate 101 series. It was written by Articulate VP of Community Tom Kuhlmann.

Creating color schemes in Articulate Presenter is fairly straightforward and allows you to customize the look of your elearning courses and presentations.

In this post, I’ll share with you how to create your own schemes and some tips and tricks on managing your color schemes and templates.

To get to the Color Scheme Editor, click on the Player Template Builder and select the colors tab. You can choose an available color scheme from the drop-down menu, or click on the “Edit Color Schemes” button to customize the scheme.

When you edit the color schemes, you make changes in the Colorizer. The process is straightforward. You select the item you want to edit, make a change to the color value, and then click on “apply this color.”

All of the color templates are in the Articulate folder on your C: drive.

C:\Program Files\Articulate\Presenter\Color Schemes

If you want to share the scheme, just copy the xml file — the one with the same name as your scheme — and the other person can paste the xml file into his color scheme folder.

That’s basically it. Pretty simple, huh?

Ok, so here are my tips.

• First, there’s no right or wrong approach to the color scheme. Do what is going to work best for you and your project.
• Sometimes, when I’m not sure what the color change will be, I experiment by changing the color to a bright yellow. Then I can easily see what has changed.
• I like to use Pixie , a free tool, to color pick my images. I will pick the darkest color on the image and then use that to make my scheme.
• I usually keep the process simple and only use one or two colors in the whole scheme.
• I like to use a darker color on the bottom and a lighter color on top. I think it helps balance the template. Of course, you’re free to do what you want.
• I use a consistent naming strategy. For example, suppose I use blue95.jpg for the background image of my PowerPoint template. When I create a custom color scheme, I name it blue95. I also name the PowerPoint template blue95.pot. This way, it’s easy for me to find the templates if I want to share them.

Here’s a quick demo of how I create my color schemes. I have also included the background image and the color scheme that I created for the demo. They’re my leap year gift to you.

Also, if you’re interested in more color schemes, I did a post recently for the Rapid E-Learning Blog, where I showed you how I come up with PowerPoint template designs. There are some more free templates for you in that post.

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