How to create the PDF

The program of choice to edit and create PDF files is InDesign by Adobe. Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing (DTP) software application produced by Adobe Systems which can be used to create things such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines and books.

It is a fantastic software application, but it is beyond my budget. Fortunately there is an open source alternative, Scribus. Maybe not so refined as InDesign, it could give you results of very high quality, for printed and PDF publishing. I won’t enter in a detailed description of the application: see the Scribus site for references and tutorials. To show you how I used it to create the PDF for my folios, in the next paragraphs I will explain the main steps from a new Scribus document to a final PDF file.

Set the document size

The first decision you have to made after creating a Scribus document is which document layout and page size to choose.

The document layout I chose is “Single Page”: as we have seen in the previous posts, it is better to use the screen real estate as a single whole space.

For the page size, there are two problems:

• there are many monitor screen sizes and resolution: from 4/3 (as 1024×768 pixels) to various wide screen format
• PDF had been originally created for printed media and so it is easier to work with wide in inches (or cm) than in pixels (at least for me)

It is not easy to give a page size that would be suitable to every viewer. After some test, I chose a 4/3 format with a page size pf 16″x12″. I suggest to experiment by yourselves and find the dimensions that are better suited to your works.

Create a Master Page

Scribus Master Pages are the means to add content to pages which have repeating content like chapter names, section heads and the like. I used master page to have the same background on every page: a black background with a gray space at the bottom for the toolbar controls. Creating a Master page is as easy as placing in a normal page some rectangular shapes, changing their background color and use the menu “Page -> Convert to Master page …”.

Now you can create new pages using the Master page in the “Insert page” dialog.

Insert images

Before inserting images, you have to prepare them in the image editor of your choice, where you can set:

• dimension: given a page size of 12″x10″, I chose an image size of 10″x8″ to leave some background space and to better isolate the images during the viewing of the folios
• resolution (PPI): for on screen viewing, a resolution of about 100 PPI is more than enough, but with PDF you can zoom on a portion of an image to evaluate it better; so it’s your choice to use a better resolution such as 200 PPI; take into account that more PPI means larger images and larger PDF file, so feel to experiment to find the right compromise

I suggest to save the final images in tiff format to avoid destructive compression till the generation of the PDF file.

Now you can add an image frame in Scribus, position it on the page (eventually aided by guides) and associate an image file to the frame. Repeat these actions for every image you want to add to the folios. A warning note: the image is not embedded in the Scribus file, so if you move the image to some other position in your file system, Scribus will loose every reference to it.

The same images can be used to create the thumbnails page. On that page, you can:

• add an image frame for every thumbnail
• associate the image to the frame
• decrement the image dimension using the scale properties of the image frame

To create the link effect, so that clicking on the image thumbnail will take the viewer to the image page, you have to add over each image frame a transparent PDF button field, making certain it covers the image frame. Then you have to go to the properties of the buttons and:

• select the Action tab
• choose Go To as the type of action
• insert the page number of the image linked to the thumbnail

Create toolbar buttons

To create the buttons for the toolbar you have to find an image (bitmap or better svg) for every action you want to provide (next, previous and so on). For example I found svg icons from the open source Tango Desktop Project and used them with some modifications. For the textual actions (e.g. Full screen on/of) you can use the text frame of Scribus

The method is analogous to that for the thumbnails page. Put the image frames, the textual frames or the imported svg at their place on the toolbar (previously prepared with the master page: see above). Cover them with a PDF button field and associate to every button the proper action. For many action you will have to use javascript, a computer language adopted by Adobe to add some behaviour in the PDF files. If you are scared by computer languages, don’t worry! It’s not that hard.

In the properties of PDF button fields:

• select the Action tab
• choose Javascript as the type of action
• choose MouseDown as the type of event
• click on the Edit button and write the proper code

And here there is a list of the Javascript code that I used for my navigation button:

• Go to next view:

app.execMenuItem("GoBack");

• Go to previous view:

app.execMenuItem("GoForward");

• Toggle full screen mode on/off

if (app.fullscreen)
{
    app.fullscreen = false;
}
else
{
    app.fullscreen = true;
}

• Close this document

this.closeDoc();

• Go to the first page

this.pageNum=0;

• Go to the previous page

this.pageNum--;

• Go to the next page

this.pageNum++;

Once prepared the button for one page, you can select them all, copy them and paste them in every page. Then you can adjust the action in the buttons to adapt to the specific page. For example, in the first page you can delete the action for the Go to the first page and Go to the previous page, maybe even rendering their images with a darker color to signal their disabling.

Export to PDF

We are at the last step. You can create the PDF file by using the export function of Scribus.

The function “Save as PDF” of Scribus has many option. Here I details how I set the most importants:

• compatibility: the PDF standard has many version, where the most recents introduced more functionalities; my advice it is to use the minimum version compatible with the functions you used in your PDF, so that even older PDF viewer can read your file; in my case I choose PDF 1.3
• compress text and vector graphics: checked
• image compression method: automatic with maximum quality
• resample image to: here the choice is between image quality (when the image are viewed zoomed in) and file dimension; I tried with 200 dpi (same as the resolution of the images prepared for the inclusion in the Scribus file) and 100 dpi (more than adequate for screen viewing) and I setted on 100 dpi as more suitable for web download; your mileage may vary
• embedding fonts: embedding fonts in the PDF file makes it slightly larger, but it garantees that your folios will be seen as you have designed on every computer, even where the fonts you have choosen are not installed; an advice: it’s better to use TrueType fonts, as embedding OpenType fonts are not possible with the PDF standard supported by Scribus (at the time of this post)
• document layout: single page; is the default view the PDF file is opened in the viewer
• visual appearance: use full screen mode; so that when the PDF file is opened in the viewer, it will be automatically setted in full screen mode for a better visual presentation
• use encription: checked, to be able to set the next security settings
• security settings: here I choose to allow printing and adding annotations and fields, but to not allow changing the document and copying text and graphics
• color settings: output intended for screen/web

Conclusions

These posts on PDF publishing treated how to use the PDF format to publish a portfolio of your photographs.

PDF publishing is stil in its infancy and so I think we will see many new and interesting way to use it in the future. As an example, in the (long) times that I wrote these posts, I found Paul Butzi site and blog. He experimented with PDF portfolios and used them in an interesting way: he revisioned his static web site getting rid of the photography galleries and using dowloadable PDF. His new site, by the way, is an example in web minimalism that I like very much.

I hope to have instilled curiosity in this medium and to have encouraged you to try by yourselves PDF publishing.

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.

Every photographer dreams of publishing a portfolio or a book of his work. Until some years ago, this dream was possible only for professionals with a large audience, given the technical problems and the expenses needed by the task.

Nowadays the publishing of portfolios and books is made easier given:

• the high quality reached by ink jet printing, which made affordable even to amateur photographer to create a portfolio of archival quality
• the diffusion of self-publishing sites like Lulu and blurb that permit to publish your own book even in a single copy; the quality is no match for traditional photographic books, but is probably enough even for advanced amateur

But these new possibilities don’t solve the major problems of printed books and portfolio: promotion and distribution.

As for promotion, the web is now the way to go. Starting with photo sharing site like flickr, creating a blog with news on your works and a web site with your portfolios permit the photographer to reach a global audience. It not easy: if you don’t want professional aid, to be effective you must have some notions of web design, css, seo and other buzzwords like these. But it can be done without great expenses.

Distribution is another story. It’s expensive and time consuming…

Here enters PDF publishing. By creating a PDF file with your photos you can control how they are displayed and the distribution is as easier as putting the file on your web sites. This type of publishing is strongly favored by Brook Jensen of Lenswork: he used it for the extended edition of Lenswork and for his personal portfolios. He advocates PDF publishing in many podcasts and now in an online workshop.

I won’t enter in the details of his argumentation, you can refer to the links above. But here is a short list the advantages that Jensen sees in PDF publishing:

• PDF could go full screen to use all the available screen real estate
• you could give to PDF a guided navigation, but still permit for personalized navigation
• PDF is distributable on the web or in cd/dvd
• PDF could be used as a simple slide show or for something original and new (for example adding music or comments)

I was very interested in these arguments and so I gave it a try. I recently created and printed two folios (even there following the Brook Jensen lead, but that’s another story): At the end of a fishing day and Cantiere Escavazione Porti. So I decided to make a PDF of these folios: here and here. In the next posts I will give some indications on how to structure and create a PDF, with examples from my folios.