Create a Digital Photo Portfolio: Part 2

A few months ago now, I submitted the first in a series of posts explaining one way to create a digital photography portfolio using Adobe InDesign and Adobe Acrobat. After much procrastination, I am finally posting the second installment of the series, which will touch on digital photography portfolio design, & layout tips. The next installment will deal with exporting and optimizing your pdf.

Originally, I had planned to go into a detailed discussion of how to create a layout from start to finish in InDesign. However, this has been covered so many times elsewhere that I have decided to skip that step and give you pointers that will hopefully be of use to you during the design process.

By the way, if you have any specific questions on this topic, please do not hesitate to ask and I'll do my best to help!

LAYOUT & DESIGN TIPS
One of the biggest mistakes that I see folks make when preparing any kind of digital presentation is the addition of too much clutter in their layouts. I would recommend only adding a very small logo / your name, perhaps a short description in an 8-10pt font and, if needed, a very unobtrusive graphic element such as a bottom bar to each image page (at most). Remember, this presentation is about your photography and anything else that you add could potentially detract from your work! Be sure to make your photos the absolute focus of each page, regardless of what choice you make. I know this sounds simple but, believe me, people often have a hard time just letting the images breathe, so-to-speak, without cramming in unnecessary verbiage, buttons, etc. It is usually a good idea to have some type of resume’ and publishing sheet in the back of the presentation. However, if the reviewer isn’t impressed by your work, no resume’ will be good enough to seal-the-deal so start there first.

Another important factor to keep in mind is your choice of the colors that will be used in your layout. I would highly recommend sticking with neutral colors such as white, gray and black to frame your images. The same goes for your choices of font colors. Creativity is often confused with wackiness but believe me, in most cases, these two concepts vary greatly.

Finally, carefully select any fonts that will be used in your layout. Stick with traditional, easy to read fonts. I'm not saying that you need to use Times New Roman or Helvetica but stay away from the Comic Sans of the world. ‘Fun’ doesn't always equate with professional, sorry!

IMAGE PREPARTION
When you export a pdf from InDesign, files will often be automatically compressed depending on the export setting that you choose (I recommend Screen-Res unless it will be printed). If you know that you will be exporting a file primarily for monitor viewing only, there a couple of things that you can do to increase your odds of a nice looking image preview:

1.) Set your image to sRGB color mode in Photoshop or your favorite image editing software. You can often get away with exporting any image to a pdf, regardless of its color mode and have it look just fine, but why take the risk? If you set up the color modes of your images properly from the get-go you won't wonder how they will hold up when your potential client sees them. Although nothing is perfect in a digital environment, every little thing that you can control helps. I've written a detailed post on this topic here. You can choose to ignore the exporting and file size (dpi settings) on the linked post if you like as it was primarily written for exporting images for web.

2.) Scale your images to the size that they will be used in the layout. I must admit that I'm sometimes very lazy when it comes to this, but often, if you have a large number of pages in your pdf, this will help to dramatically reduce your file size. Having said this, try to keep your page count down as mentioned in part 1 of the series. Although, exporting a screen-res pdf will automatically reduce your images to 72dpi (the web and screen res standard), your images will typically be larger than if you would have just taken the time to scale down their physical dimensions. For example, if you know that your image is 5" x 7", why not go ahead and save a scaled down version of the file in question to 5" x 7"? Sure, you could always shrink it down in InDesign but sometimes this just adds extra, unneeded baggage to the image and your pdf.

I'll be posting part three in the near future which will go into ways to make your portfolio interactive. This has proven to be a popular thread and I don't want to keep you all waiting so long for the next installment.

Please ask questions if you have any!

Clay

Per a recent comment on this post, I have added three links on how to begin using InDesign below. Hope they help!

Link One | Link Two | Link Three

Create a Digital Photo Portfolio: Part 1

In this series, I am going to present an overview of how to create a digital photography portfolio using Adobe InDesign, Photoshop and Acrobat Professional.

Several years ago, photographers who were interested in getting published or showing work in a gallery were required to present a portfolio of slides or prints to potential clients. However today, digital portfolios created with programs such as Adobe InDesign are becoming the norm. This is especially true for preliminary viewing of work. Unfortunately, many photographers use this new approach as an excuse to cast off the time and effort that they used to spend on creating a nice presentation. Large file sizes, awkward transitions and poor color management ring-out like beacons to savy editors and art directors who often see hundreds of portfolios over the span of a given year.

*Note: The workflow that I use for preparing a digital presentation is typically: 1) Lay out text and images in Adobe InDesign,2) Prep images for final file in Adobe Photoshop 3) Export pdf 4) Optimize pdf in Adobe Acrobat


Step One – Selecting Images for your Portfolio

Everyone is not cut out to be a good graphic designer. The good news is that there are few simple rules that you can follow to make your digital portfolio better.

1) Limit the Number of Images: Don't try to cram every single image that you have ever made in your career into your portfolio. If you've only got five strong images that represent your body of work then send five. For gallery and publication promotion try to limit the number of images in the group to between 10-15. If you have 10 really strong images this will typically be enough to peak the interest of the viewer who may then request to see more.

2) Consider a Theme-Based Portfolio: Although it is often a good idea to show that you have a wide-range of different looking images, these days, many photographers are being selected for their particular styles even if the subject matter varies. One could make the argument that the stock photography market of today is so flooded that individual styles can often be one of the only things to differentiate your work from the masses.

3) Limit the Amount of Copy in the Layout: Other than a brief introduction, biography of the artist and short captions to accompany your photos, too much copy in a digital portfolio may be distracting. If your images can't wow the viewer without a long explanation then you should reconsider the images that you have chosen to include.

Now, you're ready for the design and layout process in InDesign. Stay tuned for Part Two of this series.