Adobe Bridge Tips, Tutorials & Techniques

I frequently use Adobe Bridge to assist with my photo selection and editing workflow. I’m a fairly active blogger who enjoys capturing multitudes of photographs that pertain to the subjects I write about. One of the tools I use most with Bridge is the “Preview” tool. It’s robust and allows me to choose between shots – which ones are higher quality than others. It also lets me organize my photos, but that’s a topic for another time.

In this post, I’m going to discuss a few really simply methods of previewing photos with Bridge. As I mentioned above, the process is robust and will give you the ability to quickly filter out photos that don’t quite make the grade.

My Gallery

In this post, I’ll be using photos from a shoot I took while I was living in Palm Coast, Florida a few years ago. The son of a friend of mine was racing around a motocross track on his dirt bike and I decided to grab some photos. The venue is called “Pax Trax” and is located in Bunnell. If you take a look at this screenshot, you can see some of the images. I increased the size of the thumbnails for better viewing.

NOTE: If you’d like a larger view of any example image in this post, simply right click on it and choose “Open Image In New Tab.”

Previewing With Full-Screen

The preview method I use most often is full-screen mode. To preview an image using this method, all I need to do is to click on the thumbnail I’d like to view to selected it and then hit the space bar on my keyboard. That will expand the image so it fills my entire computer monitor. Just as easily, but not as fast, I can use the “View > Full Screen Preview” located up in the main menu area.

When I use this method, I get a wonderfully large image preview.

To return to the regular thumbnail view, all I need to do is hit the space bar once again or hit “Esc” on my keyboard.

Zooming In & Out of the Preview

Previewing an image with full view is great, but what if I wanted to really get an up-close look at a particular area of a photo? Well, to do this, all I need to do is to click my mouse once on the area I’d like to view more closely. If I wanted to use my keyboard to accomplish the same thing, I’d simply hit the “+” key. And to return to regular full-screen size, I’d hit the “–” key. I could also click on the image again to reduce the size as well.

Panning a Zoomed-In Preview

Now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s say that while my full-screen previewed image is zoomed in, I’d like to pan around a bit. You know, just to check things out. It’s always a good idea to see what the entire photo entails. To pan a zoomed-in photo, I’d simply click and drag. Remember, if I click and let go, my image with be reduced back to normal preview size. If I click and hold on, then I can drag it around.

Moving Between Images

The really neat thing about Adobe Bridge’s preview abilities is that in order to preview one image right after another, I don’t have to keep returning to the thumbnail view, only to click on another thumbnail to move to the next photo. If I’d like to preview one photo and then the next in line, right after that, all I need to do is to hit the right arrow on my keyboard. That will give me sort of a manual slide-show of every photo in my gallery.

Now, if I had tons of photos and really didn’t want to flip through every single one of them, I could specifically select which ones I’d like to move between in my full-screen preview mode (using the left and right arrows on my keyboard). To select which photos I’d like to limit Bridge to previewing, I can either select the first thumbnail in a contiguous range by clicking on it, then hold down the “Shift” key on my keyboard. After that, I can click the last thumbnail in the range. Once that’s completed, I can hit the space bar and the left and right arrows to get a glimpse of what I’d like to see.

If I have random photos I’d like to preview, I can follow the same instructions, but this time, instead of holding down the “Shift” key, I can hold down the “Ctrl” key and click on the random thumbnails of my choosing. I’ll show you what some randomly selected thumbnails look like in the screenshot below.

Now, if I head into preview mode and flip through these images, Bridge will limit the cycle to only what I’ve selected, leaving all other photos out of the loop. I’d say that’s pretty handy!

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I think there are a few different types of users who enjoy working with Adobe Bridge. Those who dabble and who don’t want to become too attached to any application and those who truly revel in immersing themselves in all of the bells and whistles an application has to offer. Personally, I’m the type to dabble. I’ve seen programs come and go through the years and I’ll tell you, I certainly am satisfied with the decision I made long ago to keep a respectable distance from allowing one piece of my workflow to become relied upon too much.

In today’s post, I’m going to discuss how to go about adding keywords to the metadata of an image file. From what I can gather, there are two methods. The first will satisfy those among you who are similar to the first type of personality I discussed above and the second method will let the other personality type set up shop and connect with Bridge more intimately. Both are great ways to add keyword metadata, so it really depends on who you are and which method you prefer.

Adding Keywords in the IPTC Core Panel

The quickest and most simple method of adding a keyword or keywords to an image is to do it through the “IPCT Core” panel. If you’re not familiar with this panel, I encourage you to read through my previous post which discusses metadata in general. But since this is a new post, I’ll give a screenshot to show you where this panel is and what the keywords field looks like.

NOTE: If you’d like a larger view of any example image in this post, simply right click on it and choose “Open Image In New Tab.”

In the above screenshot, I’ve surrounded the IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) Core panel with a red square box and enclosed the editable keyword field with a red circle. To add a keyword to an image, simply select the image in the center content panel by clicking on it and then head over to the keyword field and click to the right of the word “Keyword.” That will make the area editable and turn white. Type the keyword inside that area and then click the small check mark at the bottom of the screen to apply the keyword to the image.

Adding a Keyword to Multiple Images

Many times, you want to add a keyword to more than one image. In this case, all you need to do is to select which images you’re interested in adding the same keyword to and then follow the instructions I just gave above. By doing this, you’ll be adding that keyword to all your selected photos.

Adding Multiple Keywords to an Image

Most of the time, adding just one keyword isn’t sufficient. You’ll likely find yourself in situations where you need to describe your images with more than one keyword. In my example gallery, I’d like to identify all of the images with the keyword “Washington Oaks” and then identify only a few of the image with the keyword “Flowers.”

Since I already covered how you would go about adding a keyword to all photos, what I need to do now is go over how to add additional keyword to just a few images. To do this, I’ll go ahead and select the images I’d like to add the keyword “Flowers” to and then click to the right of the Keywords field, just like I did before. When the area becomes editable, I can type a comma (as a keyword separator) and then type my additional keyword. Follow that up with clicking on the “Apply” check mark and I’m all set. As you can see in the screenshot below, the six selected photographs have the keywords “Washington Oaks” and “Flowers” attached to them.

Using the Keywords Panel

The “Keywords” panel in Adobe Bridge is the organizational freak’s best friend. This is the place where we can see which keywords we’ve already created and where we can create and apply new ones. We can also organize them in a variety of ways to help make our lives easier. I’ll give you a screenshot of this panel below to offer a closer look.

As you can see, it’s located on the right side with a red rectangle surrounding it. And if you’ll notice, it’s got some random keywords in there that I didn’t create. These keywords are headed by “Events,” “People” and “Places.” Since these keywords came with the install of Bridge and I have no use for them, I’ll delete the entire section of each one, which will remove all nested keywords under them as well.

Deleting Keywords From the Keyword Panel

In order to delete a top level keyword with all keywords nested under it, I’ll simply right-click on the header. Once I do this, a small menu will appear with some available selections. I’ll click “Delete,” which will delete that particular section of keywords.

After that, a confirmation box will appear and I’ll click “OK.” This box simply offers a warning that we’re about to delete these keywords.

I’ll continue deleting until I’m left with only the keywords I previously added. And as you’ll see in the following screenshots, all we’ve got left are a few keywords. If I go through my images and click around on some thumbnails, the keywords on the right will either have their boxes checked off or not, based on whether they’ve got the particular keyword applied to it.

For instance, if I click on a random, non-flower image, I’ll see that only the “Washington Oaks” keyword is applied.

But if I click on a flower image that I already added the multiple keywords to, both “Washington Oaks” and “Flowers” are applied.

Applying Keywords Using the Keywords Panel

As you may have already guessed, it’s rather simple to apply an existing keyword to an image that isn’t already tagged with that word. All I need to do is to select the image or images and then check off the box to the left of the keyword in the Keywords panel. To remove a keyword from an image, I’d do the same thing, but uncheck instead of check. That will “unapply” the keyword from that image.

Adding Keywords to the Keywords Panel

This is probably the easiest task to complete in this entire post. If we would like to add a new keyword to the Keywords panel that we can use to apply to images, we can right-click inside the panel or click the small “+” icon at the bottom of the application. Both of these functions will allow us to add and name a new keyword.

In my case, I added a new keyword called “Florida.” My goal is to have a primary keyword called “Florida” and then have a bunch of Florida galleries tagged with that keyword. Then, under that keyword, I’d like to have galleries, such as the “Washington Oaks” one I’m currently working in to be tagged with that keyword. Finally, on a more granular level, I’d like to have keywords under “Washington Oaks,” such as “Flowers,” “Ponds” and “Trees.” Finally, I’d like to set these keywords up so that make sense, meaning, I want them hierarchical. First though, I’ll go ahead and create the keywords I’ll need.

Organizing Keywords Through Hierarchy

As you can see, I’ve got a few keywords in the Keywords panel now. As I already mentioned, I’d like to organize these keywords in a hierarchy, so I can apply them faster in the future and so they make sense when I look at them. If all the photos were taken in Florida, it would make sense to have all images tagged with that keyword. If all images in this gallery were taken at the Washington Oaks State Park, it would also make sense to have all these images tagged with that keyword. And since random images throughout the gallery will have individual keywords applied to them, they should be situated under everything.

The way I’m going to create a hierarchy is to click and drag each keyword right on top of the keyword I’d like it to be under. So, right now, I’m going to drag and drop the “Washington Oaks” keyword on top of the “Florida” keyword. I’ll also drag and drop the “Flowers,” “Ponds” and “Trees” keywords on top of the “Washington Oaks” keyword. If you take a look at the screenshot below, I think you’ll agree things look more tidy.

If you think about it, it’s sort of like dragging folders around on your computer. You can drag one folder into another and then out again.

Creating Sub-Keywords

I’ve been thinking about it. Even though I won’t need a “Beach” keyword now, I do have some galleries with pictures of the beach in them. Maybe I should create a new keyword called “Beach” and position it under the “Florida” keyword. When I do this, instead of creating a new keyword and dragging it where I want it, I can simply click the “Florida” keyword and then click on the “New Sub Keyword” icon down at the bottom of the panel. I’ll name the keyword and Bridge will position it as a sub-keyword under “Florida” with no dragging necessary.

Now, I can easily navigate through my images and apply keywords at will.

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Oftentimes, photographers and graphic designers find it necessary to add certain bits of information to their photos or graphics in the way of metadata. Examples of metadata might include a copyright, address, email address, phone number, etc… There are many pieces of data someone can attach to an image, given they’re using a piece of software that allows them this functionality. It just so happens that Adobe Bridge is one of those pieces of software.

In this post, I’m going to discuss how anyone using Adobe Bridge can easily add metadata to their images. I’ll go over exactly how they can accomplish this task by editing one image at a time as well as how they can edit multiple images at once. Also, I’ll talk about how to create a template that will allow for a speedy edit or addition of metadata that can be used over and over again.

Introducing the Metadata Panel

Since this post is about metadata, I think it might be helpful to show you exactly where the metadata panel in Bridge is located. If you take a look at the screenshot below, you’ll notice that I’ve got an area circled in red. The tab of the panel inside this circle is labeled “Metadata.” This is the area you’ll find all the “behind the scenes” information that’s attached to your images. In the case of my example photo gallery, my camera has already attached some information, such as the document type, the date the photo was taken, some specifics on how I was using the camera when I took the shot that’s currently selected in Bridge. If you open your own photo in Bridge, you’ll see some interesting information in the metadata panel.

NOTE: If you’d like a larger view of any example image in this post, simply right click on it and choose “Open Image In New Tab.”

Now, if you don’t see the metadata panel anywhere in your install of Bridge, you may have to enable viewing of it by heading up to the “Window” menu and then selecting “Metadata Panel.” This will ensure the panel appears for you.

Adding Metadata to a Single Image

If you click through the headings inside the metadata panel, you’ll quickly find that you can add oodles of information that describes each of your images. In my opinion, you’d be crazy to fill in each one of these fields. What isn’t crazy is to pick and choose through the areas that are most important to you. In this post, I’m going to focus primarily on the “IPTC Core” section because many of the fields contained in this area are relevant to the information I care about, such as my name (creator), email address, copyright and a few others.

Now, to add information to a single image, all I’m going to do is click on the image I’m interested in. After that, I’m going to click to the right of the field title that I’d like to describe. In my example below, I’m going to add my name as a value in the “Creator” field.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the area to the right of the “Creator” title has turned white. That changes the minute I click in that area. The white indicates that it’s an editable field. After it turned white, I simply typed in my name. If I wanted to go ahead and add more information describing me or the photo, I would continue clicking in each field and then added what I saw fit.

Adding Metadata to Multiple Images

To add metadata to multiple images simultaneously, all I would need to do is to follow the instructions I just offered above, but to select multiple images and then go about filling in my desired fields. To select multiple images, I click on the first image and then hold down the “Shift” key on my keyboard. After that (while holding down shift), I select the last image in my row of images. If I have staggered or random images I’d like to select, I would just click the first one and then hold down “Ctrl.” After that, I would go ahead and select all the images I’m interested in adding metadata information to.

In the screenshot above, you can see that I filled in the “Creator,” “State” and “Country” fields.

Creating a Metadata Template

As you might imagine, for many of your images, you’ve probably got the same exact information you’d like to add for almost every shoot you take. For instance, your name most likely won’t change anytime soon. Neither will your website address or email address. Or your copyright. So, if you’re going to be adding each of these bits of information as metadata to all your photos every time you open Bridge, it would certainly be a time (and headache) saver to create a template with all this information already filled in. With a template, you can apply the repetitive data with just a few clicks.

To create a metadata template, head up to the “Tools” menu and click on “Create Metadata Template.”

Once you do that, you’ll see the “Create Metadata Template” dialog box appear.

I know this is fairly self-explanatory, but I think it’s wise to go over it. The first thing you need to do inside this box is to name your template. This will be the name you choose from in the next section of this post, when you would like to apply the data contained in the template to your images. After you give your template a name, you’d go ahead and fill in all the information the same way you would as if you were adding it to one image at a time, like we did above. Once you’re finished with that, go ahead and click “Save” to save your template inside Bridge for later use.

Now that I’ve created a template as an example, I can go back up to the “Tools” menu and roll over “Edit Metadata Template.” When I do this, I see the “Jay Gaulard Data” template that I just created. Now it’s time to apply this template full of data to my desired images.

Applying a Metadata Template to Images

With our new template created, we can apply the information contained in it to as many images as we wish. If we want to apply it to only one image, we would simply select that one image. If we wanted to apply it to some or all images, we can select those images the same way I described earlier in this post. I’ll give you a quick keyboard shortcut for selecting all images though – press “Ctrl+A” and all your images will be selected, which might help out if you’ve got tons of them. You can also select all your images by going up to the “Edit” menu and clicking on “Select All.”

Once we’ve got our images selected, we can apply our metadata to them in two different ways. They both have identical results, so the method is really up to you. The first method is to head up to the “Tools” menu and roll over either “Append Metadata” or “Replace Metadata.” From there, you’ll see the template name. Just click on it to apply the data.

The next method of adding metadata to our images is to use the fly-out that’s located at the right of the metadata panel. If we click this area, we’ll see the same options with the same available template(s).

As you may have noticed, we’ve got two options for adding data in both of these locations. The “Append Metadata” option merely adds the data to empty fields. The “Replace Metadata” actually replaces data if those fields are already occupied.

In my example, once I click the name of my template from either of these locations, I’ll experience a small delay that’s based on the number of photos that are being edited and then I’ll see the data being applied. I can look at the fields in the metadata panel to confirm this.

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If you’ve enjoyed today’s post and found it helpful, please share it with a friend. Also, if you’d like to continue learning and would like our posts sent directly to your email inbox, simply sign up for our newsletter. We’ll send each and every post directly to you. Thanks!

I like to compare browsing files in Adobe Bridge with browsing files in Windows. The only thing that’s different between the two is that Adobe Bridge works out at the gym and Windows doesn’t. Bridge has got some serious muscle. It can do things that Windows can’t – and probably shouldn’t. Seriously, Windows has got enough to think about while Bridge is a targeted application for photographers and designers. Bridge can make life easier for all who choose to learn of its power.

In this post, I’m going to cover one slice of what Bridge can accomplish and that slice is how to rename files. I’m going to talk about how to rename individual files as well as how to do the same thing, but to a whole bunch at a time. I’ll also go over how to set naming conventions and how to save those conventions as presets. It’s all rather simple, so read on!

How To Rename An Individual File

The first thing we need to do is to open Bridge and then dig into the folder where the files we’d like to rename reside. If you aren’t sure how to open files in Adobe Bridge, please read my previous post on that topic. In this case, as you can see, I’ve already got my folder open. I’m looking at some photos I took of the “New England Submission Only” Jiu-Jitsu tournament in April of 2013.

NOTE: If you’d like a larger view of any example image in this post, simply right click on it and choose “Open Image In New Tab.”

Okay, if you’d like to rename a single image in Bridge, all you need to do is to click once on the thumbnail itself and then click again on the file name. Once the file name changes to a white editable field, you can go ahead and type in its new name. Once you’re finished, you can either hit “Enter” or “Tab” to end your editing or to move on to the next image in line, respectively.

And that, my friends, is how you rename an image or file in Bridge. The thing is, when was the last time you opened only one image or had the desire to rename a single file? Probably never. If you’re a photographer, you most likely will have taken tons of photos that were named something like “IMG_3456…,” or something like that. You’d probably have a collection of images you’d like to rename. Ahh, Bridge can help you with that as well. By the way, if you haven’t downloaded your photos from your camera yet, you can rename them as you’re downloading. Check out my post on that too.

How To Rename Multiple Files

This is actually an easy process. To rename multiple files simultaneously, you’ll need to select those files (thumbnails). To select random files, click the first one and then hold down the “Ctrl” key on your keyboard and then continue clicking on the files you’d like to rename. You’ll end up with something that looks like this screenshot.

If you’ve got a bunch of files that are all listed one after another, simply click the first one and then hold down the “Shift” key on your keyboard and click on the last file in the series. This will select all of them and give you something that looks like this screenshot.

If you’ve got a whole lot of files and don’t feel like scrolling, you can simply click “Ctrl + A” on your keyboard to select every file you have displayed from your current directory.

Once you’ve got your files selected that you’d like to rename, head up to the “Tools > Batch Rename” menu and give it a click.

Upon completing that, you’ll be presented with the “Batch Rename” dialog box that offers some renaming options.

Now, here’s where things get really cool. If you take a look at the options presented, you’ll see that you have the ability to rename your files and keep them in the same directory, rename them and move them to another directory or rename them and copy them to another directory. It’s up to you to do what you feel is necessary.

Personally, I enjoy the fact that we’re given the opportunity to really dig into creating some interesting and flexible file names inside the “New Filenames” section.

I think the easiest way to get an understanding of how this section works is to look at each drop-down box at the beginning of each line and then look at each variable in the field that’s to the right of the drop-down. After that, check out the “Preview” section at the bottom and compare your original file name to the one that’s proposed. In my case, I’ve got an original file name of:

IMG_1884.JPG

and the proposed file name is:

PROJECT_20130406_0001.JPG.

This is just from using the default settings. So, the way things are currently set up, Bridge wants to name each file that I’ve selected “Project.” After that, it wants to separate additional characters with an “_” (underscore). Next, it wants to append the date the photo was taken, using a specific date configuration. Another underscore and finally, we get the first number of a four digit sequence. If you compare that output with the drop-down boxes and variable fields, you’ll see how easy it is to set up your own naming convention. And what’s even more super-duper cool is that the preview file name updates as you change the variables in “New Filenames” section. If you need to add or take away sections of the new proposed file name, all you need to do is click the “+” or “–” button at the end of its line. Again, this is updated in real time as well.

Once everything is set the way you’d like it, go ahead and click the “Rename” button over to the right and you’ll see Bridge rename your selected files the way you specified. It’s that simple.

Saving a Naming Convention

Let’s say that you’ve got your heart set on a particular naming convention and you think you’ll use that same, or a similar, convention for many of your photo collections. I think we all agree that updating the batch rename box each and every time you want to name files is a drag. This is where “saving” a naming convention comes into play.

If you’d like to save a custom naming convention in Adobe Bridge, go ahead and click the “Save” button in the “Batch Rename” dialog box once you’re finished creating your desired configuration. After you click save, you’ll see a box that will let you fill in the preset name of your choice. Fill in the field, click “OK” and you’ll have your saved naming convention waiting for you whenever you need it.

To retrieve your convention the next time you’d like to use it, simply select it from the “Preset” drop-down box in the “Presets” section.

To delete a preset that you’re not interested in using, go ahead and choose the preset and then click “Delete” over to the right. That will remove that preset from the drop-down box.

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If you’ve enjoyed today’s post and found it helpful, please share it with a friend. Also, if you’d like to continue learning and would like our posts sent directly to your email inbox, simply sign up for our newsletter. We’ll send each and every post directly to you. Thanks!

There are many opportunities to use Adobe Bridge to quickly review photographs to see where you are with your shooting. For example, last night we experienced a Super Blood Moon Eclipse and as I was taking my photos, I continued back and forth from our back yard to my computer to analyze what I had shot. As you may be aware, nighttime photography is full of challenges and having the ability to flip through photos and look at camera specs is quite valuable.

In this post, I’m going to discuss the world of thumbnails in Adobe Bridge. There are a few neat tools we can use to find out and display information about our photos and even more methods to view our thumbnails.

Resizing Thumbnails

The very first and most simple task to complete is resizing the thumbnails Bridge gives you. If you open up Bridge and take a look at your thumbnails in the center content panel, you should see something that looks like the screenshot below.

NOTE: If you’d like a larger view of any example image in this post, simply right click on it and choose “Open Image In New Tab.”

Now, if you use the slider below the thumbnails, you can shrink and enlarge your view of them.

While the slider works well, it can be a bit cumbersome due to its small size, especially if you have trouble with your eyesight. I prefer to use my keyboard when shrinking and growing thumbnail sizes. To do this, I hold down the Ctrl key and click either the “+” or “–” keys respectively. If you prefer to use your mouse, you can always click on the little icons on either side of the slider as well. They accomplish the same task as sliding it back and forth.

Sorting Thumbnails

Last night, I took a good number of photos. Many of them were okay, but many of them were less than stellar. When viewing them after I was finished shooting, I wanted to sort each image by quality (in my opinion). To do this, I merely dragged the images around and dropped them in an order to best to worst. If you take a look at the screenshot below, you can see that once you begin clicking and dragging, the clicked thumbnail begins moving with your mouse and vertical lines appear between photos where the image would be positioned.

The minute I dropped my first image, I created a “custom” sort order and Bridge updated the sort drop-down box to read “Sort Manually.” You can see where that’s located below. The name of the sort method is listed directly below the search field. It’s a bit tricky to see because it’s not actually a box. It’s merely a word(s) with a tiny arrow to the right of it.

Also, if you take a look at the screenshot above, you can see all the other sort choices you’ve got in regards to your thumbnails. Once you’ve manually sorted, you can always select another option to view your images differently. If you change your mind and want to see your custom sort once again, simply click the drop-down box and choose “Manually” from the bottom and Bridge will display your images the same way you previously set them up. It remembers your custom order.

Also, if you’d like to reverse any sort order, all you need to do is click the small arrow that’s to the right of the drop-down box. That will change the order of your sorted thumbnails.

Viewing Thumbnail Metadata

One of our topics of conversation last night, as we were standing in the dark taking photos of the moon, was how in the world we were going to determine which camera configuration resulted in the best and highest quality photographs. As the discussion progressed, I kept my calm because I knew that I could always download the images from my camera using Adobe Bridge and then view all my metadata inside of it. The thing is, there’s a few methods of going about reviewing this data.

The first method of viewing image metadata is to simply click on each thumbnail and to take a look over to the “Metadata” panel in the right column.

While this method does give a thorough overview of image metadata, it’s a bit slow. In today’s world, we sometimes don’t need to look at every single detail. We oftentimes only need a glance at what’s important at the moment. This is where Adobe Bridge shines.

If you head up and click on the “Edit > Preferences” menu, a dialog box will appear.

Inside this dialog box, go ahead and click the “Thumbnails” selection in the left column. From there, you should see a few interesting check and drop-down boxes.

The first feature I would like to show you is called “Show Tooltips.” If you check this box off, click the “OK” button and return to the Bridge interface, you can roll over an image and certain information will appear as, what they call, a tooltip. Take a look below.

As you can see, inside this tooltip, we can view the filename, the date created, date modified, file size and the image dimensions. That’s somewhat helpful.

Now, if we head back into the “Edit > Preferences > Thumbnails” dialog box, we can see a few drop-downs that hold all sorts of information that’s for display below our thumbnails. As an example, I’m going to check off each box and choose what I’d like to appear below each image in the Bridge content panel.

As I go about checking off each box and making my selection from the drop-down, I get a live view of how the information would appear below my thumbnails. Of course, you should choose your own metadata as you go about making your selections. I’m only doing this as an example. In my case though, I’ve check all four boxes and decided that I wanted to see the exposure, focal length, color mode and date created for each image. This is extraordinarily helpful in situations such as the one I had last night, where I wanted to quickly view my best shots and the parameters that made them so good. In my daily shooting and reviewing though, I don’t generally use this extra information, so I like to keep these boxes unchecked.

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If Photoshop’s workspace management had a twin, it would be Bridge’s. Both applications have panels, tabs and Adobe provided “themed” work areas. Both applications also offer the ability to create a custom workspace. The management and customization (creating, saving, deleting) is what I’m going to cover in this post. If you haven’t already, please go ahead and read my previous two posts where I discussed all sorts of good stuff about Photoshop’s customization abilities. It’ll be a great primer for this post, as much of what I went over in these two below is applicable to what I write further on.

How to Customize Your Workspace & Interface in Photoshop

How to Create, Save & Delete Custom Workspaces in Adobe Photoshop

Oh yeah – if you’re a Lightroom user, don’t worry. Lightroom’s workspace setup and customization is similar to Photoshop’s and Bridge’s. So if you learn one, you sort of learn them all.

Preset Workspaces

Like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Bridge comes with preset workspaces. Each one is geared toward a specific type of user or a specific type of task. It isn’t uncommon for someone to flip between workspace styles while managing photos and files inside of Bridge. To kick off this post, I thought some screenshots of these workspaces was in order. But before I do that, let me show you how to go about switching between each of them.

If you’re interested in altering the layout of your tabs and panels within Bridge, you can simply navigate to the top “Window” menu, roll over “Workspace” and choose from one of the available selections.

NOTE: If you’d like a larger view of any example image in this post, simply right click on it and choose “Open Image In New Tab.”

If you’d like to accomplish the same exact task by using an alternative method, you can choose between one of the listed workspaces below the main menu. By default, only a few of these will be displayed. If you drag the small vertical bar that’s to the left of the list (to the left), more workspace choices will become available. Alternatively, you can click the down arrow and make your selection from there.

Below, I’ll give you a screenshot for each preset workspace that’s shipped with Adobe Bridge.

Essentials

Essentials is the default workspace that Bridge is set to upon opening for the very first time. It give you adjustable thumbnails in the center column with a preview to the right and metadata and keyword options below that. To the left, you’ve got your folder selections along with filters, collections and more.

Filmstrip

Many of the preset workspaces are geared toward previewing photos with a larger view than what Essentials offers. Filmstrip is one of them. Notice how you’ve got the scrolling thumbnails below the larger image. Also, the metadata and keywords panels have been removed. Lastly, if you’d like to adjust the size of the thumbnails in the filmstrip portion of the workspace, simply move the slider that’s located below the thumbnails to the left and right.

Preview

I decided to go out of order here because the Preview workspace is so similar to the Filmstrip one. Essentially, it’s almost identical, except for the fact that the thumbnails are shown vertically as opposed to horizontally.

Light Table

A popular workspace for previewing your images by themselves is Light Table. This workspace simply displays your photos while leaving all panels out of view. Remember, below the thumbnails is the size adjustment slider to enlarge and shrink your thumbnails.

Metadata & Keywords

I’m combining these two workspaces because they both focus primarily on what’s behind each photo, as opposed to previewing the photo itself. Again, for each of these workspaces, you can view adjustable thumbnails of your images, but with these layouts, you can also view some of the particulars for each shot. Also notice how the Metadata and Keywords panels are in view for each workspace, respectably.

Folders

This is probably one of my favorite workspaces. It’s simple and it lets me quickly navigate through my folder hierarchy to find the image collection I’m interested in working with. Also, since I can adjust the size of my thumbnails, I can get a quick view of my photos.

Previewing More Than One Image

Oftentimes, previewing one image at a time becomes cumbersome. For those of us who like to work fast, it’s helpful to browse through what just came off our cameras at light speed. To see what we’ve got, multiples at a time, and to compare shots quickly, we need to view our thumbnails with more flexibility. This is where multiple previews comes into play.

I’m going to give you can example of how to do this by using the Filmstrip workspace because it offers a nice, large preview area.

If you’d like to view more than one preview at a time, click on the first image thumbnail you’d like to see and then hold down your Ctrl key. After that, click on your next thumbnail. You should see your second photo appear inside the preview box. By using the Ctrl key, you have the ability to sporadically click thumbnails. If you have multiple photos that are listed one right after the other, you can click the first thumbnail and then hold down your Shift key. After that, click the last thumbnail in the series. They should all appear in the preview box. Just one note though – the preview area only displays nine previews at a time, even if you select more than nine thumbnails. The amount selected will be shown as text at the center of the preview area.

Changing Panel Size

Adobe was brilliant in giving us such helpful preset workspaces, but sometimes, while otherwise thankful, we’d like to make small alterations to the look and feel of a few of those workspaces. Adjusting the size of our panels is one way to make those changes.

To adjust the size of the panels in Bridge, all you need to do is hover your mouse over the divider between any of the panels you’d like to resize. Once you see your mouse change from a pointer to a double arrow, you can click your left mouse key and drag to the left, right, up or down. That’s it! It’s as simple as that. Check out what I’ve done to the Essentials workspace.

Resetting a Workspace

Here’s a thought – say that we go a little crazy (like I just did above) and move around all sorts of panels and resize them to a point where they don’t make any sense. What if we just want to erase the changes we made and start over? Well, there’s an easy correction for our madness. While in the workspace that you’d like to reset, head up to the “Window > Workspace” menu or to the drop-down arrow that’s to the right of the preset workspace options I discussed before and choose “Reset Workspace.” Whichever workspace you’re currently in will be reset to its original fashion. All changes you made will be gone.

Moving Individual Panels

What if your workflow called for the heavy use of, say, two panels that are currently positioned on opposite sides of the workspace? Wouldn’t it be easier to reposition those two panels so they’re right next to each other, instead of moving your mouse back and forth, back and forth?

To move a panel, simply click on the name (tab) of the panel and drag it inside of the panel you’d like to position it next to. As you’re dragging, you should see your target panel outline itself in blue. Once it does that, let go of your mouse button and drop the panel you’re dragging. You should see it now repositioned.

Again, if you’d like to quickly undo what you just did, you can easily reset your current workspace by following the instructions I gave you above.

Stacking Panels

This section is very similar to the last. If you’d like to stack a panel in its own area of your workspace as opposed to nesting it inside of another panel, you can drag it just like above, but instead of repositioning it inside of the other panel, just drag it in between the panels you’d like it to be positioned. You’ll know you’re in the right area when you see a horizontal blue line between two panels.

Adding & Removing Panels

Now that we know how to reposition panels in our workspaces, let’s go over how to add one that’s not currently available to us.

To add a panel to our current workspace, head up to the “Window” menu. From there, you should see all the active panels checked off in blue. If you’d like to add a panel that isn’t currently active, go ahead and click the panel name. You should see it appear in your workspace.

Once you see the new panel in your workspace, you can reposition it just like we went over above.

Now, if there are panels in your workspace that you don’t need, you can just as easily remove them. To do this, navigate back up to the “Window” menu and uncheck an active panel. Once you do this, you should see that panel disappear from your workspace.

Alternatively, you can also right-click on the panel name itself inside your workspace to add or remove panels. Once you right click, you’ll see a menu appear that gives you the option of removing the panel you clicked on or adding a panel to the current panel you’re inside of.

Creating & Deleting Custom Workspaces

Let’s pretend that none of Adobe’s preset workspaces are able to suit my needs. I have a huge monitor and I’d like to have access to all panels simultaneously. Also, I’d like to nest panels differently than what’s currently offered and reposition a few others. The thing is, I’d like to save this arrangement as a new workspace, as opposed to altering an existing one. Good thing we can do just this.

For this example, I’m going to start off using the Essentials workspace. I’ll add all available panels to it and then move them around the way I see fit. After that, I’ll adjust the size of each panel in the workspace.

Now that I’ve created my new workspace, I’d like to save it as a custom one. To do this, I need to head to the “Window > Workspace” menu once more or go to the drop-down arrow to the right of the preset workspace titles and choose “New Workspace…” Once that’s done, I should see a dialog box appear that gives me the ability to name my new workspace. In this case, I’ll call it my name, which is “Jay.”

Once I click “Save,” I should see my new workspace name appear in both the “Window > Workspace” menu as well as the workspace bar under the primary menu. It’s highlighted to indicate that it’s active.

Here’s the thing – I only created this workspace for this example. I don’t really want it, so I’d like it deleted. To do this, while active in the workspace, I’d need to head back up to one of the Workspace menus and choose “Delete Workspace…” After I do this, I should see a confirmation box. Click “Delete” and that custom workspace will disappear. The only issue is that while the custom workspace is no longer available as a choice, I still see its settings inside Bridge. To change to something else, I need to choose a new workspace. If I choose Essentials again, all those panels I activated and moved around are still live. It isn’t until I reset Essentials that it goes back to its original state.

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Taking advantage of Adobe Bridge to assist in downloading photos from your camera to store on a hard drive can be extremely helpful and efficient. While using your operating system to browse, select and copy files is, in general, a common practice, that method simply doesn’t offer the options Bridge does. Getting more done in less time is the name of the game.

In this post, I’m going to talk about how to go about utilizing Adobe Bridge as a partner with your camera. I’ll discuss the method I use when copying photos over to my computer, as well as what features I take advantage of while using Bridge as the go-between. Once you learn what it takes to save and organize files in this manner, you’ll wonder why you ever did it any other way. This method truly does enhance your workflow.

Connecting Your Camera

The very first task you need to complete is to connect your camera to your computer. Once that’s done and the camera is turned on, go ahead and open Adobe Bridge. Inside of Bridge, look for a small “Camera” icon up in the top task bar. When you find the camera, roll over it with your mouse. You should see “Get Photos From Camera…” appear.

NOTE: If you’d like a larger view of any example image in this post, simply right click on it and choose “Open Image In New Tab.”

After you’re sure you found the correct icon, go ahead and click it. Now, directly after this, you might see a box appear that asks whether or not you’d like Bridge’s photo downloader to kick in every time you connect your camera to your computer. It’s a yes or no question, so answer it with your preference.

Introducing Bridge Photo Downloader

Once you’re finished answering the question, you should see the “Bridge Photo Downloader” dialog box appear. That looks something like this:

If you take a look at the very first drop-down box in Photo Downloader, you should see your camera listed as the device to download from. If you don’t, click the drop-down to choose your camera.

Defining Your Location

If you move down a bit in the Photo Downloader box, you’ll see an area defined as “Import Settings.” Inside this area, you’ll need to tell Bridge where you want it to save the photos from your camera to. In order to do this, you’ll need to click the “Location > Browse” button and navigate to your folder.

Next up is a really neat feature that Bridge offers. In the previous step, you needn’t navigate to the actual destination folder on your system. All you need to do is to tell Bridge where you’d like it to “create” a folder for your images. With this next feature, you get to name the folder that Bridge creates and tell it how to disperse your photos. Take a look at this next screenshot and I’ll explain what I mean.

From the above image, you can see a few options that Bridge gives you. Personally, I like to give my folder a custom name. That’s simply my preference. The thing is, if you’re a traveling photographer or someone who engages in distinct photo shoots every day, you may want to allow Bridge to create a different sub-folder for each one of those shoots. For instance, if you chose one of the “Shot Date” selections and have three day’s worth of photos on your card, and each of those days had a different location of shooting, Bridge would create three folders – one for each day. It would also name your new folder after the selection you chose. How cool is that? But if you’re like me – someone who likes to take random shots here and there, you might just want to choose the “Custom Name” selection and type in the name directly below the drop-down box.

Renaming Your Photo Files

This next feature, which is directly below the last one, is just as neat. When you use Bridge to download photos from your camera, not only do you have the ability to create a new folder or folders, you also get to name the photos in pretty much any way you wish. So if you click on the drop-down box that’s to the right of the title “Rename Files,” you’ll see a plethora of choices.

So, say we choose the “Custom Name” selection. Once the drop-down box is closed, you should see a small field with a number “1” inside of it. This is actually the first number in a sequence of numbers that Bridge is going to append to the end of each of your files. So, if I name my files “Dog Pictures” and for whatever reason, would like to begin the sequence of numbers at 5, then I would just type both of those values into their respective fields. And directly below those fields, to the right of the word “Example,” I would see the first file name.

Additional Options

Below the folder and file fields, you’ll find some additional options, such as “Open Adobe Bridge,” “Convert to DNG,” “Delete Original Files” and “Save Copies To.” Check these boxes off as you wish. Just be careful when you instruct Bridge to delete the existing files from your camera. That’s a risky maneuver, in my opinion. Also, if you’re going to be working in either Lightroom or Photoshop, you may want to convert the files from RAW to DNG, to save a little space. I’ll be covering DNG files in a later post, so if you aren’t familiar with them or with what they are, you may want to check back here.

For many people, just filling in the preferences in this first dialog box is enough. If it is for you, then go ahead and click the “Get Media” button at the bottom of the box. I’ll warn you though, there are some additional features you can take advantage of, so you might want to continue reading below.

Advanced Dialog

Inside the “Advanced Dialog” box is where the fun starts. If you’re familiar with Adobe Lightroom at all, this dialog box will look somewhat familiar. I actually wrote a post that covers how to import photos from a DSLR camera into Lightroom, so after you’re finished with this one, you may want to head over there to check out that one. Some of the topics are similar.

In order to enter the Advanced Dialog box, all you need to do is click the button at the bottom of the dialog box you’re already in.

Once you do that, you’ll be presented with a new dialog box that looks like this:

As you can see by looking at the available options inside this advanced dialog box, we’ve already covered quite a few of them in the earlier sections of this post. What’s new is that we’re now able to view and select thumbnails of the photos that are stored on our camera. This is especially helpful if you want to download photos piecemeal or if you simply want to download some, but not others. An easy tip to follow if you only want to download a few is to use the “UnCheck All” button below the thumbnails to remove all the selections from all photos. After nothing is selected, then you can go about re-checking which photos you’d like to download to your hard drive.

If you accidentally click the “UnCheck All” button, you can just click on “Check All” to re-select all photos.

Creating a Copyright in Your Photo’s Metadata

This last section is very helpful to photographers. After you go through all the time and effort to take great photographs, I think it’s important to apply a copyright to those photos. By using Bridge’s photo downloader, this task becomes extremely simply to accomplish.

If you take a look at the “Apply Metadata” section of the advanced dialog box, you’ll see two fields. The first one called “Template to Use.” Since we haven’t created any templates yet (instructions in a later post), we can go ahead and skip that field. As we move onto the next one, we see that we can insert our name or company’s name. And below that, we can insert our copyright. Now, just as I covered in my Lightroom post, we can generate the copyright © symbol in Windows by holding down the Alt key and then typing 0169 using the number keypad on our keyboard. For Mac, hold down the Opt key and then type g. This will give you some metadata that looks like this:

Viewing Our Downloaded Photos in Bridge

Once we’re finished filling in all our metadata, we can go ahead and click the “Get Media” button at the bottom of the dialog box and wait for Bridge to do its thing. I altered a few settings for this demonstration and just downloaded everything to my desktop. This way, I can delete the folder later on.

Once Bridge is finished, you should see its interface populated with the photos you downloaded.

What’s neat is that Adobe Bridge offers all sorts of information to the right of your thumbnails. If you click around the panels a bit, you’ll see all of your customizations, such as file name, location, metadata as well as all your camera data. It’s some valuable data.

That covers how you can go about downloading photographs from your camera directly into Adobe Bridge.

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I can remember back to the early days of Photoshop, where there once was a “Browse” window that would show, in thumbnail view, all images in a folder. From that window, you could look through and open any image you were interested in working on. I think these were the days before the “CS” was added to Photoshop’s name (such as Photoshop CS3). Have I been doing this that long? Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I think this may have been around 2002. I remember that having this browse window was a pretty big deal back then. It was an effort to integrate more of a structured “workflow” to the use of Photoshop, as opposed to simply a standalone program.

These days, things have changed quite a bit. Today, we’ve got all sorts of workflow, including Camera Raw, Lightroom, Photoshop and something called Adobe “Bridge.” Bridge has been around for a while and if I had to put money on it, I’d say that it replaced the “Browse” feature that was once incorporated into Photoshop. Bridge is pretty cool. It certainly is a handy tool to have in your arsenal. If you’re a once a month Photoshop editor, perhaps you won’t find much value in using Bridge and it may be more trouble than it’s worth, but if you’re a budding or professional photographer or graphic artist who relies on efficiency and, as I mentioned above, workflow, then you really need to dig into Bridge and use it as part of your daily routine. It’s a piece of the puzzle, if you will.

In this post, I’m going to begin talking about what Adobe Bridge is and how it can integrate with Photoshop. I’ll discuss how we can browse through Bridge to find the images we’re interested in. We’ll take a look at what the program’s interface looks like and check out the different methods of viewing thumbnails and photos. This post is the first of a short series on Adobe Bridge, so if you’re curious about what else this particular application can offer, be sure to take a look the “Bridge” section of this website.

Adobe Bridge in a Nutshell

The largest group, basically everyone, knows what Photoshop is. It’s become a household word. A smaller group, primarily photographers, knows what Lightroom is. It’s an industry specific piece of software. The smallest group, hardly anyone, knows what Bridge is. I’m not sure why this is the case. Perhaps it’s because you can accomplish what you’ve set out to do without using Bridge. As I mentioned above though, if you’re a power user, your life can get a whole lot easier if you decide to take advantage of this application.

Think of it this way – if Photoshop is the band, Bridge is the band manager. We have the creative side and the managerial side. One uses free flowing thought to create pieces no one has ever seen before and the other – well, if just gets things done.

In more formal terms, Bridge is a “media asset manager.” It offers integration between other Adobe creative applications and allows for a simple and intuitive method for browsing through files and folders that reside on your local computer hard drive, your external hard drive or on various accessories, such as your camera. Throughout this post and my later ones on this topic, you’ll become very familiar with what you can accomplish with Bridge. But to get things started right now, lets look at a few screen shots and descriptions.

I think it would be helpful to simply take a peek at what the Bridge interface looks like. Below that, we’ll get into more details.

NOTE: If you’d like a larger view of any example image in this post, simply right click on it and choose “Open Image In New Tab.”

Launching Adobe Bridge

There are a few ways to initially launch Adobe Bridge. One is to simply go to your start menu and open it as you would any other program. That’s fairly straightforward. The other is to launch Bridge from right inside Photoshop. If you take a look at this next screenshot, you’ll notice that if you navigate up to the top menu and click “File,” you’ll see a selection called “Browse in Bridge.”

If you click that selection, you’ll find that you just launched Bridge right on top of Photoshop. You didn’t launch is inside of Photoshop, but as a separate application right beside Photoshop. From there, you can perform many different operations.

Exploring Adobe Bridge

Now that Bridge is open and ready, let’s take a moment to explore a bit. The first few areas I’d like to show you are the “Favorites” panel and the navigation tree. Take a look inside the red circle. If you click around your folders, you’ll see the navigation tree right above the Favorites panel change location. That’s a great way to keep tabs on your current location within your file structure. Currently, it says that I’m at the “Desktop > This PC” location.

My preferred method of navigating to my files through Bridge is to click into the “Folders” panel and browse through that. It operates the same way the Favorites panel does, but it works better with my brain. Take a look.

If I navigate to the folder I’m interested in working in from the Folders panel in the left column, I can see all the enclosed images being previewed in the center “Content” column. And if I click on one of the images, I can see a larger individual view in the right “Preview” panel. This is accompanied by all sorts of goodies, such as meta data, keywords, file properties and more, right below the Preview panel in the right column. Also, take note of how the navigation tree has been updated to show the folder’s current location.

Moving Into Photoshop

Opening Bridge and finding images is pretty useless unless we can work on them in Photoshop. So, we need to go over how to open a photo from Bridge, in Photoshop. Luckily, this is super simple. All you need to do, once you’ve found the images you’d like to work on, is to double click one of them inside the Content panel in Bridge. Once you do that, you should see the image immediately open inside of Photoshop.

Now, what’s really cool is that we don’t have to choose a photo to open from Bridge, if we just want to get back into Photoshop. If we would like to simply move over, all we need to do is to click the boomerang icon that’s up in the top bar.

We could either click on the boomerang icon to move back to Photoshop or we could click File from the top menu and then click “Return To Adobe Photoshop.” This will have the same effect.

Selecting & Moving Files

This is pretty neat. Let’s say that we want to select more than one image to either open in Photoshop or to simply relocate later on. To accomplish this, you either click on an image, then hold the Ctrl key down (if the images are random) and go ahead and select the rest of the images you’re interested in, or, click an image, then hold down the Shift key (if all images are contiguous) and select the last image in the group. Once you do this, you can see that the Preview panel in the right column shows all the selected photos.

Now, once these images are selected, we can do a few things with them. If we wanted to open them in Photoshop, we can double click on any one of the photographs we’ve selected and each one will open as an individual file inside of Photoshop. We can edit from there. If you’re not into double clicking, you can right click on any of the selected photographs and then roll over the “Open With” menu selection and click on “Open in Photoshop.”

All this is well and good, but what if we selected multiple images, not to open and edit in Photoshop, but to move to a different folder on our hard drive? Well, to relocate a file or group of files, it’s just as easy as what we did above. To move an image or images, select them and drag them over to the folder you’d like to place them in, inside the Folders panel in the left column. Once your chosen folder is highlighted, let go of your mouse and the images will have been moved.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, what I’ve covered here is just the beginning of what Bridge can do. If you’re interested in more, all you need to do is follow the “Adobe Bridge” link in the navigation menu at the top of this page.

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If you’ve enjoyed today’s post and found it helpful, please share it with a friend. Also, if you’d like to continue learning and would like our posts sent directly to your email inbox, simply sign up for our newsletter. We’ll send each and every post directly to you. Thanks!