- You must be certain that all of your recipients are equipped with
Word. Since Word costs nearly $200, it is unlikely that someone will
purchase it just to view your portfolio. There is a free Word docu-
ment viewer available from Microsoft, but unfortunately few people
know about it. - Word documents can be changed (unless they are specially coded).
This means that once your resume is circulated, someone could mod-
ify it to his or her liking before passing it on.
Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF)
Summary:This format is excellent for quickly transmitting port-
folio documents to others, though documents may become distorted if
the data is highly compressed to facilitate transmission.
Requirements:- PDF creation software, such as Adobe Acrobat or In Design, is re-
quired to read any document in this format. Recipients must have a
PDF viewer, which can be downloaded from the Internet at no ex-
pense.
Advantages: - Creating PDF documents is easy, because you are usually convert-
ing from another format to PDF. PDF creation software such as
Adobe Acrobat is essentially a converter that packages any printable
file format (for example, Word, Excel, PhotoShop, HTML) into a
PDF-formatted document. - PDF-reading software is ubiquitous. It is integrated into all the pop-
ular Internet browsers and comes with most new computers. The
software is free. In fact, it is a required piece of software for many
workplaces and universities. It is so common that most people are
not aware they have PDF software on their computers, since it is in-
tegrated into the applications they use every day. - The output of PDF creation software is considered “portable”be-
cause it can be easily and reliably transmitted. - PDFs allow you to specify the quality of the image transmitted.
When creating a PDF, you specify the level of detail you want for
your portfolio’s images. The more detail, the greater the file size. - PDF file size is generally very small. PDFs are known for preserv-
ing image quality at a small size. - PDFs are guaranteed to appear on-screen and print exactly the
same on everyone’s computer, including yours and your recipients’. - PDF files are unchangeable once they are created (unless you spec-
ify otherwise).
Disadvantages: - The compression of data that reduces the size of the file being sent,
and thereby facilitates transmission, may also cause blurry images
and even distorted text. As a general rule, the greater the compres-
sion of the data, the greater the distortion. There are, however, tools
Chapter 9: Digital Options for Your Portfolio and Resume 135