In the previous post, I introduced PDF as a mean to publish your own photo portfolio. In this post, I will look at the structure of a PDF portfolio.

How to structure the PDF for a portfolio

PDF files can be browsed freely using the navigation tools of the PDF reader (such as Adobe Reader). However it is important that a sequential browsing could give the best presentation of your work.

Essential pages

The structure of the file may be simple or very elaborated. But I think that some page types are essential:

• opening page: the title and an image the best represent the portfolio

• photo pages: a page for every image with the image information

• thumbnail pages: a page to aid the navigation with thumbnails of the images that act as links to the photo page

• colophon: informations about the portofolio such as statement, copyright notice, edition informations

You can add specific pages with bios information, promotions for buying printed portfolio or books, links to your web sites etc.

Portfolio navigation

A PDF portfolio created with the intention to be viewed on screen must adapt to the orientation of the computer screen: landscape. There is no good reason trying to imitate printed media creating a two page views.

The images of the portfolio could be better appreciated when the PDF is viewed in full screen mode. In this mode, the navigation controls of the PDF reader are usually not visible. So it is preferable to give an aid to the navigation with a personalized toolbar present in every page. It is important that the toolbar were designed coherently with the design of the pages, so that you can give a coherent experience to the viewer. This toolbar can contains buttons to go to the next/previous page, to the next/previous view (such as the back/forward button of your web browser), to the thumbnails page and permitting to activate/disactivate full screen mode.

In the next and last post on PDF publishing, I will explain how to create a PDF portfolio.