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You are here: Home / Bridge / How to Filter & Reject Files in Adobe Bridge

How to Filter & Reject Files in Adobe Bridge

April 12, 2017

When you have a high number of files to sift through after shooting a lot of video or photography, the last thing you want to do is confuse the heck out of yourself when it comes time to organize your work. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could place all your assets in a folder and have everything in plain view? Wouldn’t it also be nice if you could hit a button when you review a photo or video clip that you don’t want to use that would make that file disappear? Wouldn’t it be the best if, while the file disappeared, it wasn’t actually deleted? It was just hidden?

Well, I’ve got a surprise for you. Our favorite file organizing application (and more) offers exactly these features. Adobe Bridge is a master at getting files organized and streamlining workflow. What I just fantasized about above – no problem. Just a few pushes of a few buttons or a couple of simple mouse clicks. You’ll be able to reduce the number of files staring you in the face to the smaller number of quality shots you want to keep. Without ever deleting a single thing. I’m not sure about you, but I certainly have experienced “delete regret.” You know, when you delete that file you thought you’d never use and then want it back later on.

In today’s post, I’ll be working with some sample shots in an effort to explain how they can be easily organized. I’ll, what they call, “reject” the ones I don’t want and keep the ones I do. Then, I’ll show you how you can hide the rejected assets so they’re not in view anymore. Hiding files is perfect for making your work area super efficient. Finally, I’ll show you how to unhide the rejected files and even unreject them. All right inside of Adobe Bridge.

The Content Panel

I’ve gone ahead and launched Bridge and browsed to the folder I’d like to work in. Here’s a screenshot of all the visible thumbnails.

Adobe Bridge Content Panel

For this post, I’ll pretend that these visible thumbnails are the one’s I’ll be using for a project. Out of the twelve showing, I’d like to use only eight of them.

Rejecting Files

Now, before I go any further, I want you to know that while I’m using photos in this post, you can do the same thing for any file type. This technique isn’t limited to certain types.

Since my project calls for specific photos, I’m going to reject the boy’s face, the bull, the cat and the camera. To do this, I’ll hold down the Ctrl key on my keyboard and click each one of those thumbnails. They should become highlighted once I do that.

Highlighting Thumbnails in Adobe Bridge

In order to reject these selected files, I can do two things. I can either head up to the Label > Reject menu item and click.


Label - Reject Menu Item in Bridge

Or, as you can see in the menu, I can use Alt+Del as the keyboard shortcut. Let’s see what the thumbnails look like after I reject them.

Rejected Files in Bridge

A Reject label has been added to each of these thumbnails.

Hiding Rejected Files

While rejecting files is fun, it doesn’t really help if they are still visible in the Content panel. It’s only after they’re hidden that we experience the magic of cleaning things up.


To hide a rejected file, head up to the View > Show Rejected Files menu item and make sure it’s not checked. If it is, the files will be visible and if it’s not, they won’t be.

Show Rejected Files Menu Item

I’ll click this menu item now.

Hidden Rejected Files

As you can see from the above screenshot, the rejected files are no longer visible. They haven’t been deleted, so they’re safe if you even want to use them again. They also haven’t moved anywhere and if you browse their origin folder on your computer, they’ll be perfectly workable. It’s only in Bridge that they’ve been hidden.

To unhide the hidden files, simply visit the View > Show Rejected Files menu again and check it. That will bring the thumbnails back in all their glory.

Unrejecting Files

You would think there’s a menu item to unreject files. I mean, it’s only fitting that if you reject something that you could reverse course. Apparently not. I had to play around a while to discover exactly how to do this.

To unreject the files I initially rejected, I’ll once again select each of the thumbnails. When they’re highlighted, I’ll visit the Label > No Rating menu item and click.

Label - No Rating Menu Item

Doing this will clear out the Reject label and bring the files back to their original state. It’s that easy.

——

I hope this post helps you with organizing your workspace in Adobe Bridge. I know it can make a huge difference in cases where the photographer takes many shots of similar items where only a few are kept. Oftentimes, it’s not the intention of the photographer to delete anything – the only thing they want is for the bad ones to disappear. In these types of cases, Bridge’s Reject feature is perfect.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

  1. How to Organize Photos in Adobe Bridge
  2. Organizing & Sequencing Photos in Adobe Bridge For a Slideshow
  3. How To Open Files & Photos Into Adobe Camera Raw
  4. How to Copy Camera Raw Settings Using Adobe Bridge
  5. Renaming Multiple Files at Once in Adobe Bridge

Filed Under: Bridge

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Comments

  1. John Sharples says

    February 3, 2018 at 8:47 am

    Hi Jay. Thanks for the tip on hiding files in Bridge.

    Here is a way to permanently remove multiple files from the catalogue.

    1) Create a special keyword. I used remove.
    2) Tag the files to be removed with that keyword.
    3) Open the catalogue and filter by the remove keyword. This selects all the files to be taken off the catalogue.
    4) Select all the visible files.
    5) Right click one of the selected files.
    6) In the drop down menu select Remove from collection.

    The selected files are no longer part of the Bridge catalogue and are safely tucked away in their original folder for later use.

    Reply
    • Jay Gaulard says

      February 3, 2018 at 8:50 am

      Thanks John!

      Reply
  2. Gonzalo says

    February 20, 2018 at 6:02 pm

    Thanks for the clear explanation Jay! I have a question:

    I know Ctrl-Del is for deleting and Alt-Del is for rejecting. However, the first time I hit “Del”, Bridge asked me if I wanted to delete or reject the file. I chose “delete”, since back then I had a slightly different workflow, and selected “don’t ask me again”. In all honesty, I simply hadn’t discovered the ease of using the “reject” label and used to place either a red label or a one star rating on files I didn’t want, then round them up at the end and delete them, once I was sure I wasn’t going to use them.

    Obviously that’s precisely the function of the reject label! So now that I’ve repented and want to be able to use *just* the “Del” key to REJECT files, I can’t find any settings option to turn it back to “reject”!

    So, to sum it up, Alt+Del rejects, Ctrl+Del deletes, and Del deletes, but I really really want to be able to use “Del” to reject again. Is there any way to do this??

    Thanks!!
    – Gonzalo

    Reply
    • Gonzalo says

      May 27, 2018 at 9:12 pm

      Eventually I figured it out on my own, and I wanted to post the answer for anyone from the future who might be searching for the same answer lol…

      Just reset all warnings. In Bridge, go to Edit -> Preferences, then under “General” click on “Reset” – Reset All Warning Dialogs. The next time you hit “delete” for a file you’ll be asked again and you’ll have your chance to redeem yourself 😀

      Cheers!

      Reply
      • Jay Gaulard says

        May 27, 2018 at 10:09 pm

        Thanks Gonzolo!

        Reply

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