PDF Portfolios - Are they worthwhile?

[Richard Mahoney]

As some of you know I've lately been putting together my first photography site. It's been a bit of a trial. While I've a little experience designing `text-heavy' sites I've found that predominantly image-based sites are somewhat different, especially when it comes to matching expectations for simple, easy-to-use, fast navigation.

To some extent I anticipated the strong desire to click from one image to the next and back and so on. What I did not anticipate was the simply *huge* gap between what one sees in a print and what one sees on one's monitor.

The variation in quality between one monitor and another and between different web browsers is distressing, especially if one aims to sell at least some of one's work online. I've refined and simplified my site quite a bit since its initial release almost a month ago but I've come to realise that there are very real limitations being imposed on the web-based display of images, especially large format images.

A little frustrated, over the last weekend I tried another approach. Using the open source desktop publishing app. `Scribus':

http://www.scribus.net/

I knocked up a PDF file containing a dozen or so images included in the web site. For those interested here is a direct link to the file (be warned, 16MB):

http://camera-antipodea.indica-et-bu...-portfolio.pdf

This PDF includes 4" x 5" images downsized from the original 24" x 30" drum scans. It seems to me that the PDF is easier to navigate and offers better colour matching and resolution than I've been able to obtain through the web site. I'm wondering if this has been the experience of others on this list. I'd be interested to hear too about what people here really think of PDF image collections. Do you think they have a place? Are they helpful or just another irritation? And how widely used are they really -- I've found a good many being made available, but not as many as I would expect if people actually liked them ...


Kind regards,

Richard

[Joe Lipka]

Of course PDF folios are worthwhile. With few exceptions (photo blog and projects in progress) my entire site is PDF folios. The advantages of the pdf are many, but chiefly they are the PDF's ability to create a high quality image with a fairly small file size. Click by my web site and see what I mean (link below).

As a critique, your effort is very good for a first effort. There are a few suggestions I would make in the PDF construction.

1. File size. It took a long while for the PDF to load up on my computer. Please check the resolution of your pdf distillation.

2. Image size. There is no need to keep you images small. Fill up the screen with the image. Technical details look repetitive, so confine them to the last page of your folio. Despite what you might think, most people would rather look at your images than read about the technical details of your photographic methods. If you make your images bigger, there is not a pressing need to distill them at a high resolution. Experiment. You will find a good place where file size and the way the image looks are balanced.

3. Opening. You can control how the folio opens up. Have the folio open up "full screen". Spend some time on a cover page that relates to what you are going to show the viewer on the inside. Many people do judge a book by its cover. Because that is what you are doing now, making books. (Isn't it fun?)

4. This is habit forming. Be careful. I have been playing with this method of photographic output for almost ten years. I think it has definitely changed my entire way of looking at photography.

It got to the point where I forced myself to make a decision between large format, hand coated prints and a "less classical" approach to photography (that's full digital, dry processing). The change was from a large format based "greatest hits" photography to a more project oriented multi-picture photographic endeavor. It's been a great deal of fun and I have turned out a lot of work.

If you would like to learn more about creating this type of project, LensWork publishing has an photography course on a disk treating the subject of PDF publishing. Here's a link to the LensWork site, http://www.lenswork.com/

Have fun with this new direction.

[IanG]

Have to agree with Joe, PDF portfolios are great and really easy to do.

Agree your PDF hung Firefox, not sure about Scribus but usually there are options like saving for Pre-Press, the Web etc, and if you choose the web option it'll resize images etc for you, usually you can fine tune the options as well.

That block of text bottom right does nothing, it's not needed on the papges of images. Needs to be clean and simple like a book.

Ian

[Frank Petronio]

You can't control your audience's viewing environment or equipment. What you want to do it is to have the worst case scenario degrade gracefully.

Right now your PDF is a lot larger than it needs to be, I suppose somebody might want to zoom in if they are fanatics but I usually try to discourage anyone that enthusiastic! It does make it convenient for people who might want to swipe crops of your images for backgrounds and such though, so it is a thoughtful community service ;-)

It's also a bit strange to layout the images so they take up only half the page, assuming people will zoom in. Why not just fill the page as large as possible if you want your images to look their best?

A lot of commercial photographers offer a PDF version of their portfolios. There is no reason not to have multiple versions - I like having a mobile cell phone portfolio too. Potential designer and ad agency clients might want to distribute the PDF to show their end-clients and bosses.

I just wouldn't have ONLY a PDF portfolio. Think about searchability, accessibility, ease of updating, etc.

Also I change the flow and order when assembling my PDF portfolio in In Design, adding some text pages, logos, etc. so it works as a stand-alone presentation detached from the website. Think about some horribly old-school boss who insists that people print PDFs for him (such fossils still exist). Your presentation should print well (but not too well) and be branded so people know where the images came from.

The size of the images need not be any larger than the resolution of your audience's largest potential screen, perhaps 2000 pixels on the longest dimension would cover even the people with 30" monitors.

Don't forget to add copyright info to the PDF itself.

Last consideration is to size it to be under 10mb so people can easily email it.

[Mark Barendt]

The variation in quality between one monitor and another and between different web browsers is distressing, ...

This PDF includes 4" x 5" images downsized from the original 24" x 30" drum scans. It seems to me that the PDF is easier to navigate and offers better colour matching and resolution than I've been able to obtain through the web site. I'm wondering if this has been the experience of others on this list.

It's not just the browsers.

PDF's do have certain advantages but color matching from computer to computer, is not one of them, at least from what I've seen.

The problem is personal, literally. Not only do specific machines display differently, people adjust their monitors to their own preferences rather than a specific standard. Old guys like me tend to turn the brightness up, other people like blue more than red, blah, blah, blah...

Chasing a color match over the web is a losing battle.

[IanG]

Never found colour a big issue at all with PDF's, I've used them for well over a decade for sending work to litho printers etc.

If a viewer sets their monitor inappropriately at least they are judging your works against other images seen the same way, colour/contrast, resolution.

Ian

[sultanofcognac]

I deal with PDFs on a daily basis, as Art Director for an international technology magazine, sending them to Zurich and Geneva from here in France. I also have a private publishing company in Switzerland and do design/layout work for other publishing companies in four countries.

PDFs are not a panacea by any stretch of the imagination. It DOES come down to a user's monitor and how their profiles are set to view PDFs in Acrobat, whether it's Acrobat reader or Pro, and their monitor settings, as well as the location and ambient room light/time of day/etc.

My boss in Geneva will view a certain colour on the cover and want a change. he'll send me the CMYK values (and monitors only see in RGB) and we'll go back and forth about what we see. We've tried for almost a generation to coerce our monitors to see the same colours on a PDF but it's just not possible (plus he uses Windoze, I'm on Macs).

I have my monitors calibrated to see 'almost' what our printer produces - that's the best one can do. Working with something that should look the same on the web without sticking with web-safe colours is courting disaster.

Using PDFs is a great idea, but don't rely on that as the only medium.

[Richard Mahoney]

Just a quick note of thanks to all of you who replied on and off list about PDF portfolios. I've now had a chance to clean up the file. It should be easier to navigate and is more secure and smaller -- 5.5 meg rather than 16. Hopefully it won't be crashing machines anymore


Best regards, Richard