Portfolio on Cd's.....advice needed.

[Sportera]

I am scanning to ulitimately provide a portfoilio on CD. Photosop has a PDF automation feature, beyond that, I am clueless. I would like some high res images, maybe a slideshow with the ability to stop and view any image for awhile. Is a PDF good enough to send to a gallery? I of course, have researched galleries that will take images on cd, most ask for prints if they are interested or so I have read.

Any and all advice welcome.

 

[Derek Lofgreen]

Well there are a lot of variables and ways to do it.

1. Make sure the disk is formated ISO for both windows and Mac OS. (Not as much of a problem since OSX came out but still good idea)
2. You can make a Flash presentation that is made into executible files. (One for each OS will be required)
3. Powerpoint slide show (Looks better on windows than Mac)
4. HTML gallery on the disk
5. PDF slideshow. I think you can make this from powerpoint and other apps.

D.

 

[avandesande]

There are many ways to skin this cat. A powerpoint slideshow would probably be the easiest to do. For something more slick you would use macromedia director or flash, which are not that easy to use. The nice thing about a flash presentation would be that you could use some of it on your website.

I am not sure about pdf or a html display though, they wont surrender the entire screen so it won't look as good.

I used to do this for a living you can PM me if you like.

 

[127]

I'd go for something in HTML - lightweight, simple, and portable. With a few scripts it's pretty trivial to autogenerate the whole thing.

powerpoint/director/flash (even pdf) all rely on them having some particular software installed on their machines, or if you include the display program, that they have a machine that can run it. It may seem like a safe bet to assume they can view powerpoint (or run the pp viewer), but if it doesn't work first click, then your CD goes straight in the trash.

Ian

 

[Derek Lofgreen]

Well, directer and flash apps are compiled into executable files that don't rely on other software being installed. Only when you are trying to stream it over the web is when you need to worry about plugins being installed. If you deliver it as a .pdf you can also inlcude the acrobat viewer.

D.

 

[Helen B]

Is it worth checking to see if the gallery has particular preferences for the way that the files are presented? See photo-eye for instance.

Best,
Helen

 

[127]

Well, directer and flash apps are compiled into executable files that don't rely on other software being installed

And how well do those windows executables work when I put the CD in my Mac?

Yes there are workarounds, but are you SURE it's going to work, everytime.

Ian

 

[Flotsam]

I did a multi-media CD of my commercial work in Director with versions that could run on both Windows and pre-OSX Mac depending on which machine you stuck disk in. At the time, you had to recompile the piece a bit to run correctly on each system.
I was doubtful at first too but I never ran into anyone on either platform who couldn't run the final product as an executable regardless of the OS version without any special software installed on their end.