Embarrassing confession: for the past 4 years we haven’t had a portfolio. We were no longer shooting portraits, and spending all our time teaching, so a portfolio wasn’t exactly necessary. But yeah, we should have had one. I tried a couple times: playing around with Squarespace and WordPress. But nothing really stuck, and we had no place to show our work.
Finally creating a portfolio was on our list of things to do this year, and I sure wasn’t looking forward to it.
Then last night I saw something pop up in the news: Adobe had just released a portfolio builder, creatively called “Adobe Portfolio“.
I clicked through, the templates looked neat, so I held my breath and clicked on Pricing.
“For you, Lauren, it’s free.”
Oh what sweet, sweet words! Yes, that’s exactly what the site said. Since we have a subscription to Adobe’s Creative Cloud for the bajillion Adobe programs we use, (and I was currently signed in, so it creepily knew my name) Portfolio is free. Sold!
So I started to see what it was like. Lo and behold, an hour of poking around, a few clicks and uploads and I found myself with a portfolio! Another hour of fine tuning, and I had something published and ready to share.
I present to you, the first portfolio of our personal work ever!
Now I say that it’s ready to share, but it is certainly far from complete. This was done in one evening of work (an evening broken up by watching some Netflix and going in about half a dozen times to put the baby back to sleep). But with a few more evenings of work, I’m sure I’ll have something pretty comprehensive.
So what do I think of Adobe Portfolio? I really enjoy using it! It’s simple, for sure. If you’re looking for a really complex website, this isn’t it. There’s no blog, or shopping cart, and it won’t do any crazy slideshows or blast music out at your unsuspecting viewers. But it does what it’s supposed to do very well: build a portfolio of your best work.
Using the editor takes a tiny bit of getting used to, which is true of anything really. For the most part it’s very intuitive, and I didn’t need to read any instructions or look up tutorials to get it to do what I wanted. Sometimes I’d find myself scratching my head, wondering how to do something (like remove dates from the project grid) but once I understood how the system is designed (you click into something to pull up all the options) then it was easy enough to figure out.
The best part is that it looks really good out of the box, and it’s hard to make it look bad. The spacing and typography are top notch, and that goes a LONG way to creating a beautiful presentation. Those kinds of things aren’t easy to do either, so I appreciate them handling the setup for me there. It’s linked into Typekit so you can add lots of lovely fonts to put your own twist on it.
Adding photos and text is easy, you can put in captions, have the images pop up in a lightbox for bigger viewing, reorder them and remove them with ease and even embed videos and contact forms from Wufoo and other such things.
There are 5 different templates to choose from, each quite clean and minimal, because, again, this is supposed to be about showing off your work, not dazzling with fanciful web design. I really appreciated that it saved my adjustments to each template when I switched to another one, so I could tinker, try out something different, and come back to what I had first made without worrying about losing my adjustments.
And, of course, everything is optimized for mobile so your site will look good on any device. There’s even a nifty little preview at the bottom so you can check to see how it looks on different devices with different orientations.
Other Nifty Features:
- Use your own domain name
- The editor is “live” meaning you can see your adjustments as you make them. This makes the whole process much quicker and easier
- Things like padding and spacing and size are all adjustable with sliders, so you can really fine tune the layout
- Allows global style adjustments to everything from link colors and hovers, to image rollovers and other nerdy web design stuff (global means you can adjust everything at once, keeping the design consistent, and saving time)
- Ties in with Behance if you use that service to show off your work
All in all, it was a very enjoyable and fun process, and I was pleased as punch with the outcome.
It’s nothing insane, but it’s exactly what I need right now. And I’m sure many many others will find it’s just right for them.
Adobe Portfolio is included with both the full Creative Cloud membership ($49.99/month) AND the Photography bundle, which gives you Lightroom and Photoshop for $9.99/month.
My biggest piece of advice for using Adobe Portfolio?
(Other than just finally sitting down and using it to make that portfolio you’ve been putting off?) Put your personality into it. Hard. As I’ve said, these templates are simple. They look like a billion other templates out there. There’s nothing wrong with that, because these designs sure do work well – they are easy for your viewers to navigate, and show your work off.
But you have to do something to make your site stand out from the billions. Whether it’s the colour, logo, titles of your projects, what you write in your About page, or whatnot. Have fun with it, be yourself to the fullest, and find a way to take these templates and make them yours!
Megan says
Oh my goodness, Lauren, this post just made my day! I didn’t even know this was a thing! And the free is the best part. :) I am going to make this my project over the next couple of weeks. Do you know if you can embed it into an already-existing website, or does it just override what you already have going on your domain name?
Lauren Lim says
Hey Megan! You wouldn’t be able to embed it anywhere – once you have your domain name hooked up this will be what shows up! (It won’t erase anything, since it just points the domain name there, so if you wanted to keep your current site you could get a different domain name for it). Hope that helps!
Jon Stallings says
I created mine several weeks ago and it still needs some work. (http://jonstallings.myportfolio.com/) Not sure if I am 100% sold on the template I chose. I do like how fast it loads
Lauren Lim says
Looks great, Jon! High five!
DJ HOGG says
Jon, I do like your page. Keep in mind that the template is just a starting point…you can change everything. dj
Kylie Garner says
Ohh thank you for this. can’t wait to create mine!
Lauren Lim says
Have fun Kylie!
Steven Huynh says
Thank you for sharing your photography. It’s really nice to be able to see another side to you and your family! Will there ever be a “Rob” or “Lauren” specific section to the portfolio? As I look at your photos, I always wonder who is behind the camera.
Ellen Hoverkamp says
Hi,
I’m considering switching over from Cargo Collective to Adobe Portfolio but I am concerned about adding my Big Cartel shopping cart system and linking to my Blogger Blog. Can this be done using Portfolio? I couldn’t find any mention of that in the Adobe description. Thanks.
Hoamatgfui says
Did my portfolio yesterday and I´m IN LOVE !! http://hoamatgfui.myportfolio.com/
Never thought I could do such a website on my own FOR FREE!
:)
Kristen says
Lovely portfolio! I’m in love with your photos of winter. They’re beautiful, and you really captured the snow nicely with the warmer elements of the buildings and such. Very nice!
Ervine GANDONOU says
Hello! I did mine but I don’t know how to see the actual site to send it to my friends to check it out for example. Do I have to pay the 9.99$ a month for a year for that? I see everybody say it is free but I can only edit it for free. But I can’t see the final result and have my own link. Please reply to help me. Thank you
Rob Lim says
Hey Ervine,
Adobe Portfolio is free for those who already have a Creative Cloud subscription. For those who don’t have a subscription it will cost either $10/month for the photography plan or $50/month for the full Creative Cloud plan.
Tom Jarvis says
Hi! I set up my portfolio recently and have not been able to upload portrait-oriented photos without them being flipped on their side. Have you experienced this?
The response from Adobe made no sense to me! (I am awaiting a further reply but saw your website and thought I would post here too). My Mac viewer and Lightroom show these pics as portrait, and their dimensions suggest they are “seen” as being portrait oriented. I did wonder if image size played a role, but I expect I’m making some rookie oversight.
I would try a few more things before posting but, in addition to the above, Portfolio is not loading the add/edit content to projects screen today….
Thanks in advance for any comments. Tom
DJ HOGG says
I noticed Adobe Portfolio when it first came out but it seemed too complicated. After reading your blog and others… I had this learning curve it was so easy to setup this page. My clients say it looks great. The good part is it’s part of Adobe CC. My old page was $65.00 per month and was impossible to update and was slow to load. Adobe’s servers seem to be fast! It will take a little time but everyone with Adobe CC should setup a site. Why not its part of the service and it looks great!!
Jen says
Can you include other file types for example writing samples/PDF? Or is it only for images?
polly says
Sorry, idiot question here, but once the site is created how do you go about getting it live and getting it hosted? I don’t know where to start! (I’m in Australia).
barry says
does anyone know how long the trial version keeps your site online?
Thanks in advance for any comments. barry
Dani says
Hi I have just completed my portfolio it looks great! Now, it’s time to pay. Im looking at the basic option for individual photography £9.98 a month or £119.21 for the year. Which payment method would you recommend?
Eliegh Robinson says
Hello, Lauren I’m trying to create website for my Family Reunion for 2019 is this is a good tool to use for that. Because I tried Wix.com and WordPress and they want me to pay for extra stuff for the domain name. I already have Adobe Creative Cloud. By the way your website looks amazing
Kaitlyn Luckow says
Unfortunately, I do believe that you will have to pay for a specific domain name wherever you go.
Lu Prescott says
https://luprescott.myportfolio.com/factory-workers I made mine yesterday.
Kaitlyn Luckow says
It looks great, Lu!
LP says
Thanks!
Mihae says
How do you remove dates from the project grid?! I can’t seem to find any info on how to do it.
Dace says
In the design sidebar when adjusting settings, go to: All Collections>Page Covers>Cover Images>Page Dates