Professionals from all sectors will find this feature useful. For educators, using the portfolio feature will be a great way to follow class records and achievements. Legal professionals will be able to use it to organize criminal dossiers, documents, and judgments; add security; and collect electronic signatures. And graphic artists and photographers will love the way they’ll be able to present their work to new clients, keep current clients up to date with project status, and create marketing strategies to further advance their careers.

STEP 1 Create a Portfolio
Start creating your portfolio by choosing File>Create PDF Portfolio. This launches the Portfolio window.

STEP 2 Or Open a Portfolio and Edit
If you already have a portfolio started and want to edit it, open it by choosing File>Open, then navigate to the PDF portfolio file. If you want to make more modifications to your portfolio file, click the Modify button at the top of the window and choose Modify>Edit Portfolio from the drop-down menu to access the Edit PDF Portfolio panel options.

STEP 3 Populate Portfolio
You have three options to start adding your files to your portfolio by way of three buttons at the bottom-left corner of the window: Add Files, Add Existing Folder, or Create New Folder. Clicking on Add Files launches the Add Files menu, where you can then navigate to your files. Continue to add more files by clicking on the buttons to fill your portfolio. You can preview PDF, Text, JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, and BMP files. Once you have added the files you want, enhance the look of the portfolio using the Edit PDF Portfolio panel on the right side of your screen.

STEP 4 Populate En Mass
Add a bunch of files at once by clicking the Add Existing Folder button or by selecting Modify>Add Existing Folder. The icon shows a folder, but double-click on the folder to see all of your files.

STEP 5 Choose a Layout
The Edit Portfolio panel of the Portfolio window allows you to choose the look of your portfolio layout. Select from four layouts: Basic Grid, On an Image, Revolve, and Sliding Row. Basic Grid gives you—well, just that—a basic grid of your images/documents. On an Image allows you to add a background image. Revolve provides a carousel effect that ushers your selected file to the forefront of your screen and cycles through them in round robin fashion. And Sliding Row allows you see a few files at a time and rotate through them linearly.

STEP 6 Spice Up Your Portfolio
You can also add eye candy to your portfolio with options like a welcome page or header. Add a header by choosing Add Welcome & Header from the Edit PDF Portfolio panel. When you click on the Header style in the panel, a window pops up that you add your text and/or image to. This window also allows you to do some basic text and image editing. When you’re finished, simply click the X in the top-right corner of the window to close it.

STEP 7 Get in the Weeds
Metadata’s the name of the game these days. And you have the option of choosing what file data you want to be accessible to viewers. To access the metadata, click Specify File Details in the Edit PDF Portfolio panel. To choose the details you want, simply check those options. You can also add a custom column by entering the name of the column in the Add a Column text field, choosing the type of data you’ll be filling that column with from the drop-down menu to the right (Text, Number, or Date), and clicking the button with the plus sign to add it. If you want to delete it later, just click on its name under Columns to Display (not the checkbox) and click the Trash icon below.

STEP 8 Publish Your Portfolio
When you’re finished pulling your portfolio together, click on the Publish tab in the Edit PDF Portfolio panel. You can choose to either save it, email it, or share it on Acrobat.com. The Save and Email options are intuitive to use. But to learn more about how to use Acrobat.com, visit our Acrobat 9: Live Collaboration with ConnectNow article.

STEP 9 Review Portfolios
Another great feature of Portfolio is the ability to use existing Acrobat commenting functionality just as you would any other PDF. Simply click the Comment button at the top of the window and choose Show Comment & Markup Toolbar from the drop-down menu. On this floating menu are a plethora of Comments and Markup tools for you to choose from.

Of course, a PDF portfolio enjoys all of the capabilities of any other PDF document. This means that not only can your portfolio be easily shared and accessed across the globe via one of the most ubiquitous file types out there, you can also determine how you want it to look regardless of operating system, browser, and sundry other settings.

Before you start, however, realize that in the world of the CS2 applications, the world is mostly broadband, and bandwidth limitation regarding compression of images is slowly becoming a thing of the past. With that said, there’s still a noticeable difference in the time it takes to load a page with “uncompressed” images compared to dramatically compressed images. This is the surefire, always-work method.

Material from this article was excerpted from the book Adobe Creative Suite CS2 Workflow, from O’Reilly Media (digitalmedia.oreilly.com), published in December, 2005. © 2005, O’Reilly Media, Inc., all rights reserved.

STEP 1: Open the Image

In Photoshop, open the image you want to use and choose File > Save for Web. The image will appear in the Save for Web dialog box with the compression that was used last in the dialog box, as shown in the Figure above.

STEP 2: Choose the File Format

If necessary, choose JPEG. (There are few benefits to GIF and PING that aren’t outweighed by the universal acceptance of JPEG files in web software.)

STEP 3: Adjusting the Size

Note that the size you’re seeing the image is the size it will appear on the web page. Sometimes, especially with digital cameras, images can appear quite large in the Save for Web dialog box. If you want to change the size of the image, click the Image Size tab, shown in the Image Aboves. If you want to change the image size, enter a different number in the Width or Height fields (the other field will update automatically) and click the Apply button. The image will be displayed at the new size.

STEP 4: Comparing the Original to the Compressed Version

To compare the current “compressed” image with the original, click the 2-Up tab at the top of the dialog box. This will allow you to see the original image compared to the compressed image. The compression in the figure above is set to JPEG Low so that you can easily tell the difference between the original and the compressed image. Depending on the image, high levels of compression might not make much of a visible difference.

STEP 5: Save the Image

Once you’re happy with the compression settings, click the Save button.

STEP 6: Save Optimized As

In the Save Optimized As dialog box, set the location and the name. Be sure the file ends with .jpg if you’ve chosen JPEG as the file type.

When you save the original Photoshop file, it remembers the settings, location and name of the Save for Web file you’ve saved, so if you update the file, you can hop into Save for Web and click Save to quickly update your web-ready image.

To open layers of a Photoshop image in Illustrator:

In Illustrator open your Photoshop file by using File > Open. Note that you cannot Place a Photoshop file with layers into Illustrator, you can only open it.

STEP 1: Import to Photoshop

In the Photoshop Import Options dialog box that appears, choose the Convert Photoshop layers to objects option.

STEP 2: Illustrator Layers

In Illustrator’s Layers palette, each Photoshop layer will be a different object.

STEP 3: Imported Image

After you have the image in Illustrator in separate layers, you can do all sorts of interesting things with it. The image as it appears in Illustrator initially is shown in the figure above.

STEP 4: Changing Color

The image above was created by tracing the top layer (which contained just the clock), colorizing it slightly, and adding a stroke to the traced pieces.

Material from this article was excerpted from the book Adobe Creative Suite CS2 Workflow, from O’Reilly Media (digitalmedia.oreilly.com), published in December, 2005. © 2005, O’Reilly Media, Inc., all rights reserved.

But even though the Art Brush looks like a brush and acts like a brush, beneath those bristly edges hides a one-stroke image tool. Not quite with me? Let me explain. The traditional way to create multiple objects is to draw the object first, then copy and paste that object and transform the pasted object to make it larger or smaller. Drawing this way is fine. However, it can be time-consuming.

Instead, you can create a bunch of objects easily using the Art Brush. For this example, I’m going to make a bunch of mice. Draw a mouse with the Paintbrush tool or use Live Trace. Using Live Trace can cut the drawing time of any object down considerably. You can scan a few photographs and convert them to paths with the Live Trace tool. Edit these paths using the Direct Selection tool. I like to Group the object just to keep all of the parts together. Or, for you more traditional artists, draw the object using the Pen tool. Remember, when you fill the shapes with color, you cannot use gradients, gradient mesh, or blends. Don’t let that stop you from trying this technique. You can create pretty cool-looking objects using solid fills and varying the color to create shadows and highlights.

To create a mouse Art Brush:

STEP 1

With the Selection tool, select the mouse and choose New Brush from the Brushes palette’s (Window>Brushes) flyout menu, or simply drag the mouse art over the Brushes palette. The New Brush dialog will pop up.

STEP 2

Choose Art Brush as your type of brush. In the Art Brush Options dialog, be sure to check the Proportional checkbox or your mice will be out of sorts. Choose the direction in which you best draw. I tend to draw from top to bottom, so I chose the last arrow direction.

STEP 3

When you click OK, you can start using the Paintbrush tool with this new brush. The brush you just created will be the active brush. The longer strokes will make larger mice, and smaller strokes make smaller mice. Now you can paint a menagerie of mice by the stroke of a brush.

STEP 4

Have some fun with it: try curving the line, going sideways, or making a wiggly line.

STEP 5

To take the mouse a step further, drag a copy of the mouse from the Brushes palette and drop it onto the page. Select the mouse and then use the Rotate tool (R) to rotate the mouse so it’s upright. Using the Live Paint Bucket tool (K), click on the mouse to make it a live paint group, select a Fill color, and fill in the mouse with color.

STEP 6

The Live Paint option lets you very quickly colorize any drawn objects, especially ones without closed paths. A really amazing thing about using the Art Brush is that the file will be so much smaller because it only records one actual object where copying and pasting creates multiple objects resulting in a much larger file size. Not only can you create your own brushes, but you can also use the various default brush styles to apply to your artwork for a hand-drawn flair. To apply a different brush automatically, you can select the object first and then click a brush in the Brushes palette. This image here shows a house in the upper left as it was originally and then with a variety of brush strokes applied.