Maybe OT: pdf for presenting images

I'm interested in your response to the following download:

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http://www.robertappleby.com/personal/album.pdf

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I realise that the pictures were taken with a contax rather than a leica, but i'm trying to garner some responses to the use of pdf as a way of publishing images on-line. I'd be grateful for any responses, either on this forum or directly.

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Thanks,

Hi Rob!

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I can't download anything here. Your picture of the three kiddies on

the street in India definitely proves that you're a good photograph

(even if it wasn't a Leica, har har). Unfortunately (for me), the

picture(s) you mentioned in your posting here (as /personal/album.pdf)

is a pdf-file. I don't like pdf-files because it takes too long to

download and to also open them and then I can't reformat or adjust

anything at all. Like margin widths etc. Even if only on a table or on

a page of text. I use Adobe's Acrobat 5.0.5. I don't have any

suggestions for better image publishing, but I (myself) would never

even try to publish anything using pdf.

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Still, best regards and lots of luck. Mike

As a presentation method, it works, once the hook is in to make me

want to wait, but as a web system, the only way I'd tolerate waiting

for all of that to download was if I was absolutely SURE it would be

worth it (as I was, since it was you.) Normally, if I went to a

random site and there wasn't some normal html preview of what I was

opening up to assure me it was worth it, I probably wouldn't bother

to wait for it to download, which took a LONG time.

Robert, thank you for the beautiful images. I like the pdf file as a

way to download photographs. I have both a cable modem and an ADSL

modem that allow rapid downloads, so no problem with large files.

Michael Kastner

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in acrobat you can set the viewing size and whether to be full page

or in a window. I think it's more flexible than html because you can

view it at different magnifications.

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This is really a first step towards _publication_ rather than just

posting images, which is why I'm doing this little opinion poll.

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Michael Darnton (sorry, I have to distinguish between Michaels here)

your point about an html preview is well taken, thanks. This was just

a test of the pdf mechanism, but obviously, integrated into a website

would require a html gallery as an intro or taster.

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Thanks for the feedback.

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R.

Nice images, and an intresting way to present them. As someone said

above, since you have to wait for the download, you need to be sure

it's 'worth' it. Maybe thumbnails on the web page? What I like about

it is that it's a single package- your statement, and the photos.

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There have been some sites that seem to use Flash or something- where

everything seems to load in at first, and so viewing them is truly like

a slide show.

Hi Rob,

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Thank you for sharing the photographs. It is like browsing

through one of those small Magnum books. My favourite is the

one with the white elephant. Being a lost existentialist, I love

found meanings in strange juxtapositions. Whether it is actualy

exists is a question for another discipline and forum.

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It was a quick download on my cable modem but I can see that

people with 56k modems would be waiting a long time.

Regardless, I do feel the files are too small. Edges and

transistions are a little rough and the palette of tones limited. I

think that a larger file size would be a good step. You could have

it available for download in two resolutions along with

aproximate download times. Mind you I am sure the people with

56k modems would then end up downloading it twice....

Simple tourist indeed! As usual, stunning images Rob.

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I am with the others here on the Acrobat download. I have DSL, and

still had to wait an agonizing 30 or 40 seconds for the document to

fully download. However, once here it was a pleasure to peruse! If

you are looking into web publishing methods, I would take a good look

at Flash. If you want the recipient to be able to easily print what

you send them, Acrobat works very well once you get past the

download. BTW, Flash also supports sound, so you can actually publish

a complete multimedia-type presentation.

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Cheers,

Rob:

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I got an error message trying to see this with the Netscape Acrobat

plug-in - may just be a memory problem at my end.

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I've been experimenting with .pdfs myself as a way of making

photographic "E-books". Web publication remains so limited by

bandwidth/download time that html still seems the most reasonable

technique to use on this medium. A book-length PDF even at screen

resolution (100 images at 300K each) is still 30 megabytes to download.

A good web designer can make an effective presentation work in html,

and because it loads sequentially, at least you have something to look

at while other images download. Digitaljournalist.org has a large

number of photo-essays available in this form.

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One technique you might consider - make the .pdf a downloadable Stuff-

It file for opening and viewing off-line - this might save some

download time by additonal compression.

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Even the text-only "ebooks" seem to have been a flop so far - there

hasn't been a convergence between market, technology, format and

contaent yet.

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I have a couple of Macromedia Director/CD-based photo books from Rick

Smolan - originator of the the "Day in the Life of..." books - "Passage

to Vietnam" and "From Alice to Ocean". They are beautiful productions.

But even with those examples as a leading light digital photo

publishing has never taken off.

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But keep working at it - eventually SOME format and SOME distribution

network will catch on.

Hello Rob-

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I love the elephant and the hedge pruned to human form. All your

photos here tie together very well for me. I think you should shoot

more than once every ten years...

Thanks everyone for the feedback. This was just testing the waters

for a larger project, I'll keep you posted.

I really like these pictures Rob. Somehow, they look like they are

more than just a few years old, more like the India of 35 years ago.

I can't quite put my finger on it... Have to think about this a bit.

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As for the .pdf format, I had no problems with speed or viewing at my

high speed workstation at work, but I have received not dissimilar

photo portfolios in .pdf by email in the past, at home. They were

quite a nuisance to view, due to my slow home line.

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So I would advise against mass emailing attached .pdf presentations

such as this one...Someone or the other who is a vital member of the

audience may end up struggling to process it on their ancient

computer.

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On the other hand, the .pdf really does work in a very book-like way,

compared to most web-based, multimedia type photo portfolios (such as

the ones at digitaljournalist.org).

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I guess I'm trying to say that the pdf has some of the snappy, page

turning quality of a book, that makes it very appealing...

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I'm really not in a position to comment on image quality tradeoffs

regarding pdfs and other methods. The pdf pictures seem a bit more

work-print like, somehow. But I can't be sure.

Mani, that's an interesting comment. Another friend of mine, not

Indian, but married to a Bengali woman (Ketaki Kushari, ring any

bells?) also said that it didn't look like India to him. I think it's

very much a newcomer's view, not the eye of someone who knows India

at all well. I hope my later stuff is more convincing!

Rob, <BR><BR>

I mainly subscribe to everything already said: Great pictures which I

loved to review. I think pdf is an interesting alternative to online

viewing (I don't mind download times if I'm really teased into getting

the stuff). It's a very comfortable means to keep things together (and

download them in one single step) and to make viewers "revisit" your

portfolio. The most attractive feature is the combination of

(searchable!) text and images (tip: make even your images searchable by

keywords, even "hidden" ones, like white on white!). The resizability

is very attractive, too. As for fonts: My machine didn't have Garamond

loaded - so you might consider packaging a (compressed) pdf file with

the necessary font file, if layout and look of the text is

critical...?! For curiosity: How complicated was the production of this

e-booklet? What did it take you, time and softwarewise? Keep up the

excellent photo work - looking forward to future presentations of

yours. Cheers.

Lutz

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I use Pagemaker and Photoshop, Vuescan for scanning. These are all

tools which require a certain familiarity, but both photoshop and

vuescan have powerful batch processing features, which is essential

for this kind of quick production. With these tools (and my rather

basic skill set) it took me about two hours to produce the pdf from

scratch, including scanning. I could have spent more time on tweaking

the images (including a bit of spotting) but the aim was to see what

people's reaction to the pdf as a medium was, the images were not so

important.

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Probably the most time consuming thing overall was writing the

foreword - I'm not very good at that sort of thing!

This was a very nice way to look at those nice photos! Once loaded

(which did take quite a while) I found it the best way of

presentation I have seen on the web!

Rob, does PageMaker come with a pdf(-producing) plug-in? Or did you use

Acrobat (full version) and imported PageMaker files?

Lutz, all you've got to do is download the generic postscript printer

driver from adobe and install it as a printer on lpt1 or whatever,

and then distiller will compose for that printer, which results in a

pdf. I don't have the full acrobat application, although I'll have to

get it eventually as pagemaker doesn't have a full set of pdf

controls.