- [Voiceover] Hey everybody.
This is graphic designer Roberto Blake
and in today's tutorial,
I'm going to be showing you how to use Adobe InDesign
to create a PDF portfolio.
So, let's go ahead and get started.
We're going to do some basic things here.
We're going to go ahead and reduce our margins
to a quarter of an inch all the way around.
We're going to use two columns
and that's going to be our basic setup.
We're not going to do bleed on this,
just so that wherever you're getting this done
if you need to get it printed.
Ideally, we're going to be using this mostly for screen
but if you do need to get it printed,
if you avoid using bleed,
then you can get it printed anywhere,
so can any of your clients when reviewing it
without having to worry
whether their printer has that capability,
whether it's an at-home printer
or a printer from somewhere else
like OfficeMax, Staples, what have you.
So, let's go ahead and jump right in.
One of the first things we're going to want to do
is we're going to want to kind of establish
what our overall layout is going to be
and how many pages we're going to have.
And for the sake of this tutorial,
I'm just going to use four pages
and these are going to represent interior pages.
You would have typically a cover page
but again, you're going to design your own cover,
so let's go ahead and go to page two as an interior page
and I'm going to show you something really interesting
that we can do.
We can create a new master page
and we're just going to go ahead and use the default here
with the prefix of B and we're going to say Interior
and so we know that these are for interior pages.
These aren't going to be the pages
that are outside the book like the cover.
So, we're going to go ahead
and apply a master to these pages.
It's going to be the interior.
So now you'll notice that all of these
have switched over to being B now.
So these are going to be our interior pages.
So everything we do on this master page for B
is going to be represented
inside of our interior pages that share that.
Now the important thing about that is
what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead
and we're going to set some basic type here
and we're going to set this type
to represent your contact information,
so we're going to have your name.
We're going to set your email.
We're going to set your number.
So, this is what we're going to have.
We're going to have a basic place for your name,
your email, and your phone number.
And here's the interesting thing about that.
Now that we've done that,
you'll notice that this appears
on every page that we have labeled B
but not on anything that we have labeled A.
So that means that our cover
is not going to have it in that place
but it's going to be uniform
throughout the rest of the document.
So let's go ahead and modify that now.
So let's just say this is going to be John Smith.
That's always a good one.
So we'll just do that and it'll be
John@johnsmith.com
and we'll just use,
for the sake of argument.
Now, something that I'm going to do in this case is
I'm going to switch over to the typography workspace
and the reason is this is just going to give me,
personally, better options to work with
and I'm going to do what's called
creating a new paragraph style.
So what I'm going to do is
I'm going to select all of this John Smith type
and I'm going to change my font
and I'm going to use one of my favorite fonts.
I'm going to use Avenir.
So I'm going to switch this over to Avenir.
I don't necessarily need it to be 12 point.
I'm going to set it at 10 point type
and that actually looks pretty good to me.
So, now I'm going to add this new paragraph style,
which is Paragraph Style 2 and I'm going to edit it
and I'm going to label it Contact Info.
So now, if I ever need the contact info
to utilize that style anywhere that I'm putting it,
I can deal with that in that way.
So, going back to the interior page,
let's just go ahead and adjust this and move it down.
Let's do that a little bit more.
And, let's go ahead
and use Command, Shift, and R.
That'll be Control for you guys using Windows
and we'll do that and now it's flush to our border there.
So that's going to be, again, consistent
throughout every interior page.
Alright?
So, the next thing we're going to do is
I'm going to go over here
to my Creative Cloud digital art folder
and I'm going to pick out a piece
and let's go with this one for now.
I'm going to pick out a piece here and I'm going to drag it
onto this page.
Now, you'll notice that it's looking a bit pixelated
but we can fix that pretty easily.
What we'll do is we'll just go to Display Performance
and we'll go to High Quality Display
and then it'll show up differently there.
Now, I don't necessarily like
where it is in the frame right now,
so I'm just going to drag the frame out,
so now we have some options.
In the Object, you could go to Fitting
and you can tell it to Fit Frame Proportionally,
Content Proportionally, you have all these options.
What I usually do is I use Command, Shift, Alt, and C,
which'll be Control, Shift, Alt, and C
for you guys using Windows
and I always fill the frame proportionally.
So I'm going to use the Command,
which is again Control for you guys on Windows,
and Colon so that I can eliminate my margins there,
just so you can get a better idea of what that looks like.
So, now you have the object filled proportionally
to your frame size,
and we've done it in such a way
that it fits within our margins.
You want that to be important.
So, if I want to do something where I'm going to describe
this particular piece in the portfolio,
what I can do here is I'm just going to use Fill Type.
I'm just going to have it insert some placeholder text
and I'm going to change this to Avenir.
I'm going to make it 14 point.
I'm going to select all
and I'm going to make a new paragraph style.
And I'm going to call this Body copy.
So now, whenever I do that paragraph style
on another internal page.
Let's go ahead and we go to page two here.
Let's say that I'm going to do some Body copy here.
We'll just go ahead and go to Type
and insert placeholder text.
I'll just select all of this.
I'll go to my paragraph styles
and I'll tell it to make it Body copy, and there we go.
So now I have that.
Let's say that I want a frame that has...
Let's say that I want a frame
that has different dimensions and proportions
than the one we just did and I want my image to go in there.
Well, I can go ahead and I can use the Frame tool here.
I can make the frame whatever size I want
and I can go over here and I can drag an image
into that frame.
Let's go ahead and use...
We'll go ahead and use this one.
So now, I'll use shortcut A,
and I can move this image around in the frame,
however I want.
I can also go ahead and select and drag
proportionally from the corners,
and I can resize it.
And the orange outline will show me
what I have to work with there,
and I can put that into my frame.
So, that looks pretty good.
Now, I'm a fan of making your layouts consistent
as far as this sort of thing goes
but you can do whatever you want.
It is your portfolio.
If you want to go with, you know, a magazine style
and kind of change some things up,
you can certainly do that.
If you look at my personal PDF portfolio,
you'll see that I went with a mostly consistent format
across the board,
where I kept all of my description text in the same place
and used the same font styles, et cetera,
but again, this is your portfolio.
You can do whatever you want with it.
And just so that we don't have this blank here,
I'm just going to...
And if you're wondering how I'm resizing this this quickly,
this is just Command, Shift,
and the greater than and less than signs.
And then, same thing with shortcut C to center it.
And again, this is just so that
we have something on the cover here
because I'm tired of looking at it blank.
Alright, let's say you want to put
multiple images in your PDF portfolio.
There's definitely a couple of ways you can do that.
In this case, we're just going to go ahead
and make two frames.
So I made one frame
and I'm going to make a duplicate of that frame
by holding Shift and Alt
and moving that directly across with my smart guides.
So now if I go to my portfolio here and I select two images.
Let's go ahead and select this one,
and let's select
this one.
So if I drag these over into InDesign,
you'll notice that it gives me two thumbnails
which you see the number two there
and if I go ahead and click on the frame,
it'll paste each of them into the frame.
So I'm going to go ahead and use Ctrl, Alt, C.
Sorry, Command, Alt, Shift, C
and same thing for Windows but with Control
and then, I'm going to just move this over, like so,
and I'm going to do the same thing here.
So again, I can click on this or I can use shortcut A
and then I can move these around as I see fit,
and I like how those look right there.
And I can just copy
and I can use Shift, Command, Alt, V
to paste this in exactly the same place if I wanted to.
I'll just go ahead and move these down,
and then use that shortcut again.
So, in this short period of time,
I've put together, even though I'm using placeholder text,
which you'll probably copy and paste from a word document.
You should have already done a write-up
on your portfolio pieces,
so that you can go ahead and do this sort of thing
very easily.
You can just copy and paste in your text
for each different item that you have
and then you can just create these frames.
You can set up your layout
and yes, this is a very plain layout
but very plain layouts for portfolio purposes work,
as I said in the video that goes with this,
so you can just showcase the work.
Make the work the hero.
What we have going on here in all of these pages
when you go through them,
is the work is taking center stage
and that's the really important thing here.
The work is taking center stage
and the portfolio itself
is clean and it's consistent.
Contact information is all in the same place.
The fonts are the same size, you know,
and they have the appropriate relationships.
So, that's what's important here.
So I'm going to scroll through this real quick
to give you an idea,
and again, this is your basic PDF portfolio.
Now, when you go to export this,
you have a couple of different options.
You can use Control, E or you can use Command, E
and you have a bunch of different options.
You can do it as a PDF that's interactive
which will basically give you a web-based PDF,
so let's just go to, let's just say...
If we were going to do that,
it'll give us some options here.
So, you can go ahead
and you can control the overall JPEG quality.
You can set it to medium or high.
You will get different results
in terms of the file size based on that.
You can set the resolution.
I like to set it to 96,
just in case they have a high res screen
or in case they want it printed, it won't come out so bad.
You can definitely set it to 144 or 300 if you want.
Again, in this case, we're setting it
for an interactive PDF portfolio
even though we don't have interactive elements,
which you could add if you wanted to.
I prefer to set Open In Full Screen Mode,
so that when it comes out, it's scaling up to the screen
but there are certainly other options
that you have for that.
If you're going to go ahead
and if you're going to make it a print version,
you'll get a different series of options.
Those will look like this.
You'll have the ability to control the overall compression.
You'll be able to set up marks and bleeds
if you were going to have this file be the one
that you're sending to the printer for your print portfolio,
and you don't necessarily have to do that
but sometimes, it can be helpful
if you're using a more advanced printer
as far as a commercial printer.
And you can also go ahead
and do some of your pre-flight checks
by looking at the summary
and just different things like that.
You can also use some of these Adobe presets.
So again, these are your basic options.
Another thing you could do with this if you wanted to
is you could export these as individual JPEGs.
You could have every individual page be a JPEG
and that might be helpful if you want to use them
in a very specific way.
That is an option if for some reason,
you feel like you need individual JPEG one sheets
and there can be some ways you can utilize that.
Maybe you decide to use that on your portfolio website,
so you know, that's an option that you should consider.
Well, I hope this video tutorial helped you
in figuring out how to assemble your PDF portfolio.
If you want some advice on ways to approach this,
go ahead and make sure you watch that video
in my YouTube series.
I'll leave a link in the annotation
and in the description below.
Go ahead and ask me any questions that you have
about portfolios in the comments section.
Like this video if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other videos on my YouTube channel
and as always, thanks for watching.