Photographers - Adobe or other app for offline client presentations / portfolio on iPad

[El_Jeffe]

I'm looking for the best option to show clients my work during in-person meetings on my iPad, lunch and coffee meetings where I can't rely on the restaurants WiFi or hot spotting to my phone. I have a lot of work that isn't on my website, more in-depth work on various projects and work that I can't have on my website because of various commercial restrictions, etc. 

How are you showing your work to clients on the iPad?
Is Foliobook a good option since it became Foliobook 4?

Are there other good portfolio app options other than Foliobook 4?

Are there any options within the Adobe ecosystem? It would be ideal to use an Adobe product as I have the full Adobe subscription.

I have most of my finished photographs (fully retouched), in Adobe Creative Cloud in folders (portraits, healthcare, lifestyle, food etc), so ideally, I like to pull images or access Creative Cloud to populate whatever app I'm using to show clients work.

I don't use Lightroom (I use Capture One as my RAW converter), but still have access to Lightroom on the iPad if that's an good option for showing work.

I think Adobe Portfolio is more of an alternate website than an in-person portfolio app, or is it(?), or are there any other Adobe apps that fit the bill?

Many thanks for your thoughts and opinions!

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Hi @El_Jeffe I would consider downloading the slides to a folder in your Photos app and just slide through there. Why complicate things?

[El_Jeffe]

Because the clients - like everyone - would probably just start scrolling through pictures and start accessing my regular photos (how many times have we all given someone our phone to look at one or two photos, to see them start scrolling through our entire feed!), so I'm not sure that's the solution I'm looking for. I'd like something more self-contained where they can explore through various folders: portraits; B+W portraits; portraits of seniors; sports lifestyle; food lifestyle etc, while I'm talking about my process. Maybe I need not to be as concerned about being offline as free WiFi is in most places now and it's normally easy to hot-spot with phones, but I hate it when there are technical issues in front of clients. 

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

@El_Jeffe I have an iPad for portfolio/work and there are ways to manage this (see below).

My concern would be if you go with a wifi-reliant solution, what do you do when you don't have access? I wouldn't risk that businesses have free/public wifi available.

The other option besides an app would be to create a PDF portfolio there by containing your files and navigation in one location.

Otherwise if you really want an app - you can research the app store for top-rated solutions and see if they have an offline component.

[Conrad_C]

Because the clients - like everyone - would probably just start scrolling through pictures and start accessing my regular photos (how many times have we all given someone our phone to look at one or two photos, to see them start scrolling through our entire feed!), so I'm not sure that's the solution I'm looking for. I'd like something more self-contained where they can explore through various folders: portraits; B+W portraits; portraits of seniors; sports lifestyle; food lifestyle etc, while I'm talking about my process.

By @El_Jeffe

For that specific use case, I don’t think there is a solution from Adobe.

If it was just one folder that didn’t need to be locked off, I would say just export images into a normal cloud folder (iCloud Drive, Google Drive, etc.) that you can browse in the iOS Files app and use the QuickLook full screen slide show straight from Files, then you don’t need any other apps. But, you need to keep users out of other galleries and apps, so that won’t work.

If it was just one folder that you needed locked off, I would suggest laying out a book in the Book module, printing it to PDF, and tossing that PDF over to the iPad to let people browse it full screen in the Files app, again no other apps needed. But you need enough interactivity to present a set of galleries, so that won’t work for you.

For your two requirements of “locked out of rest of iPad” and “set of galleries,” you are probably looking at a dedicated non-Adobe app. The only reason I’m not recommending any is that I haven’t used one, but that topic has come up in some threads here. In the iPad App Store, two terms you want to use to find potential apps are “kiosk” and “portfolio”. Kiosk apps are widely used to turn iPads into things like museum guides, building directories, and retail point-of-sale, so they are designed to deliver interactive, user-driven visual information while also fencing off the rest of the iPad. Portfolio apps are more specialized for artists/photographers to sort of replace the traditional “pass it around” paper portfolio, but with additional features like branching navigation to multiple galleries instead of being a linear series of pages. And of course, many portfolio apps can store the whole thing on board to be independent of a network connection.

To answer your question about Adobe Portfolio, it’s meant to be an art-focused basic website, not specifically a locked off “pass it around” portfolio. You could use it to set up the kind of organization you need, but because it’s basically a website, it needs a network connection and wouldn’t fence people into the portfolio because it’s just a normal website running in a normal web browser.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

@El_Jeffe plus I doubt you are going to leave your iPad alone with a reviewer - wouldn't you be there to guide them? A self-directed review sounds more like you need a website for someone to view rather than an in-person iPad.

[Conrad_C]

I think the intention is to emulate the traditional paper portfolio, where you hand it across the table to the potential client during the interview, and let them page through your work while you are there to answer questions.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

@Conrad_C correct - my point was - I doubt an interviewer would leave the folder or portfolio to dig through your personal items.

[Conrad_C]

I doubt it too, but because they’re concerned about it, it was worth addressing. 

Also, and possibly more importantly…although most good clients would not be interested in anything outside the portfolio, the way iPad OS works today, it might happen even if they never intended to. iPad OS now contains a very large number of swipe and pinch gestures that, depending on how many fingers move on the screen and across which screen edge or direction, will slide to the previous app, switch to the application switcher, slide in the widgets, slide down the Home screen and its notifications list and widgets, slide in Stage Manager, slide up the Dock, close the app to the Home screen, and possibly one or two more I forget about. Any of those could accidentally happen when all the client wanted to do with their fingers is swipe to the next photo. So there is justification for wanting to lock all that out.

Although…that just reminded me of an idea I read about the other day: In iPad OS you can enable Guided Access mode, which is sort of a basic kiosk mode. So, it’s possible to do something like set up an interactive branching slide show portfolio in Apple Keynote, restrict access to the rest of the iPad using Guided Access, and if that’s good enough, it’s a free solution.

[Lumigraphics]

I recommend this app:

https://ipadportfolioapp.com/

[El_Jeffe · Accepted solution]

Great information and suggestions folks!! I actually ended up going with two options that I'll refine and adapt.

My first was to use the iPad Portfolio App as a "big dump" portfolio. I won't just hand this over to client, but if there's a particular project they respond to or a particular style that may have application in a project they're working on, say B+W portraits, I can go to the B+W Portraits gallery in the Portfolio App and show them more examples there. 

The second option was to make a tight, focused Overview in Apple Keynote of 40 images, which approximates the number of images in a printed portfolo. This is highly curated and laid out, with careful consideration made to image flow. With this I have 3 options to show. I or the viewer can tap the screen to move between images, easily going forward or backwards within Keynote. The disadvantage I found is that it's very easy to jump back into the edit screen of Keynote doing that. However, you can also export a PDF of the presenation and view in Acrobat (also Books, which is a suggestion I'll check out later - thanks!), or as a movie, essentially a slideshow. Personally I wasn't keen on the movie as it wasn't quite as easy as I'd hoped to stop the movie mid-flow to talk about a particular image, but maybe with a group of people it would be a good option. 

I'm going to check out Guided Access, Books and Kiosk apps. All sound like great options and ways to refine the above approach. Thanks!!!!