Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
do so safely by making technology work for them. There are several options to help
show your work in all its glory:
•
Adobe Acrobat PDFs.
PDF files preserve font, format, and color decisions
for artwork that combines type and image. (See Chapter 4, “Delivery and
Format,” for more about PDFs.) If they're not password-protected, anyone
with Acrobat Professional can extract text and images from them. Fortu-
nately, it's easy to lock your PDF in Adobe InDesign, the software that most
designers use to create multi-page portfolio PDFs. After selecting File >
Export and clicking the Save button, you'll see a small column of options on
the left side of the dialog. Select Security from this list of options. In the
Permissions section, check the check box to require a password, and type a
password in the field. Uncheck “Enable copying of text, images, and other
content” to prevent your work from being copied or extracted.
You can prevent the materials in your PDF
from being copied or extracted by
changing the defaults in the Permissions
controls. To be even more secure, you can
limit the changes allowed to Commenting.
That way, team members of a potential
employer can still share one copy of your
work and point out specific projects that
interest them.
•
Player software.
Players make your work portable. Although it is possible to
extract material from a player file, it is very difficult, and usually far more
work than it's worth. Flash SWF files are the preferred players for interactive
portfolios. If you are concerned that someone might download one of your
SWF files from your site and repost it elsewhere as their own, you can easily
disable the right-click context menu. Before you create the SWF file, just visit
File > Publish Settings and select the HTML tab in the dialog. Uncheck
“Display menu” in the Playback section.
•
Watermarking and digital “signatures.”
Some programs allow you to
imprint sound and image files with invisible digital watermarks—methods
that hide identifying content inside the digital data of a file without chang-
ing the look or sound of the file. This embedded data makes it possible to
prove ownership of an image, even if someone makes major alterations to
the original.
