21 free tools for perfecting your portfolio

One of the tasks, that as designers, we are constantly being asked to tackle is to build impressive and fitting web-based portfolios for clients, friends, and even ourselves. Portfolios stand as a virtual calling card, connecting your work with people across the world wide web at the click of a ‘Stumble’ or search result link. Making it a must thing to get right.

Today we bring you a compilation of web design resources that will help you in your quest of portfolio perfection. From start to finish, these useful tools are the proverbial bee’s knees of portfolio arsenal enhancers. With them on your side, you should be able to craft a design that does more than delivers the work it presents to the online masses, but that honors it.

jGallery

jGallery is a free jQuery photo gallery with albums and preloader featuring 41 configuration parameters, 43 transition effects, unlimited scalability and more!

Event Gallery 3

Event Gallery 3 offers a unique way to present your images on your Joomla Site even allowing you to sell your images directly from your own website.

Galleria

Galleria is a free JavaScript framework that simplifies the process of creating beautiful, responsive image galleries, no programming skills required.

Vanillabox

Vanillabox is a simple, bare bones jQuery lightbox plugin with no pre applied design. Use this as the starting point for a completely customized design.

flipLightBox

flipLightBox is a responsive lightbox jQuery plugin with a unique flip effect as each image opens and closes.

Ion.ImageSlider

Ion.ImageSlider is an image slider and lightbox all in one with cross browser compatability and support for multiple touch devices.

Hatch

Hatch is a simple free portfolio WordPress theme built on the Hybrid Core framework with a responsive layout optimized for mobile browsing.

Blueimp Gallery

Blueimp Gallery is an image and video gallery, carousel and lightbox that is fully customizable, responsive and touch-enabled.

CollagePlus

CollagePlus is an image gallery plugin for jQuery that will arrange your images to fit within an exact container with a number of customizable options.

Galereya

Galereya is a responsive, easily customizable jQuery gallery with a stylish, and engaging, masonry layout that visually draws users into the work.

Unique

Unique is a free WordPress theme that displays your portfolio in a fully responsive grid type showcase. The name about says it all.

Visage

Visage is a clean jQuery lightbox that is customizable through provided configuration options and API hooks.

jQuery Responsive Thumbnail Gallery Plugin

jQuery Responsive Thumbnail Gallery Plugin is an easy to implement jQuery plugin for creating image galleries that scale to their container.

Shadowbox.js

Shadowbox.js is a highly customizable, unobtrusive lightbox that offers flexibility free from any frameworks.

Unslider

Unslider is an open source, responsive jQuery slider with touch support. It says it all in the header. With full control you can implement this slider with all its flexibility and fluidity.

jQuery Fullsizable Plugin

jQuery Fullsizable Plugin takes the full available browser space for image viewing. It also supports the native HTML5 fullscreen API in modern browsers.

Simple Image Gallery

Simple Image Gallery is a Joomla plugin that will turn any folder in your Joomla website into a grid style image gallery and lightbox. Perfect for presenting the work in your portfolio.

Full Width Image Slider

Full Width Image Slider is a simple 100% width slider that uses CSS transitions and scales down to mobile size with ease.

Justified Gallery

Justified Gallery is a jQuery plugin that creates a justified image gallery that rearranges itself as the page is resized.

Smooth Diagonal Fade Gallery

The Smooth Diagonal Fade Gallery uses CSS transitions to create a smooth diagonal fade effect for your portfolio. It might be just the accent your design is missing.

Roundfolio

Roundfolio Is a free single page portfolio template featuring round elements. It’s easy to customize and edit so you can get your new portfolio up and running quickly.

Rob Bowen

Rob Bowen is an emerging filmmaker, celebrated author/podcaster and poet, and most recently the co-founder and imaginative co-contributor of the creative design and blogging duo at the Arbenting and Dead Wings Designs.