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Photoshop

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Adobe Bridge

Adobe Bridge is a relatively new feature to Adobe products, including Photoshop. It is available with Photoshop CS2 and CS3. It is actually a separate program on its own, which can be used with many different Adobe applications to locate, organize and preview files that those programs work with. Used with Photoshop, it can display thumbnails of image files in a selected folder, making it easier to scan the folder contents for a particular image. (View a full-sized image of the Adobe Bridge.)

Adobe Bridge is capable of working with all kinds of files, such as video files, audio files, or pretty much any other file on your computer. However, for the purposes of this course, we will concentrate on its image capabilities.

In addition, it displays image information about the selected image and provides many tools for managing files.

Older versions of Photoshop (Photoshop 7.0 and CS) used something called the File Browser, which performed similarly to Adobe Bridge, although Adobe Bridge is now much more powerful.

Opening Adobe Bridge

By default, the Adobe Bridge button is displayed at the top of the Photoshop interface. As well, you can access Bridge by going to File > Browse. The Bridge icon looks a little different between Photoshop CS2: and Photoshop CS3:

Navigating

The Folders pane in the upper left of Bridge contains the file structure of the current drive. You can scroll through it and double-click to open folders to reach the desired folder. Clicking on a folder in this pane will display its contents in the Content pane of the Bridge interface. If the folder contains other folders, you can double-click on them there too.

Selecting Files

• To select a single file, click on its thumbnail. A large thumbnail of the image will be displayed in the Preview pane (upper right) of Bridge.
• To select multiple contiguous files, click on the first thumbnail and then Shift-click the last thumbnail in the series.
• To select additional non-contiguous files, Ctrl-click (Cmd-click) on the additional thumbnails.
• To select all files in the folder, choose Select All from the Edit menu or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-A (Cmd-A).
• To deselect all files, choose Deselect All in the Edit menu.

Thumbnail Sizes

The size of the image thumbnails can be changed by clicking and dragging the Thumbnail Size slider at the bottom of the Bridge interface.

Sorting Files

You can sort the contents of a particular folder according to all kinds of criteria using the Filter pane. Click on Sort by Filename at the top of the pane, and you will see a list of options to sort by. The default is always By Filename, which will order all of the files/folders alphabetically according to filename. There are a number of other options you can sort by. Refer to the image for more.

Clicking the up or down facing triangle next to the current sort order will change the order from ascending or descending.

Filtering Filers

Filtering by Filetype

As well as sorting, the Filter Pane can be used to "filter out" certain files, so that you only see the ones you need to. There are many options available for filtering. The image shows the filter options.

Only the file types contained in the current folder will be shown. For example, if you wanted to see only JPEG files, you could click on JPEG (as shown in the image, this folder contains 1 JPEG image) filter, and only JPEG files would be shown in the Contents pane. This filter would then show a check mark next to it. You can choose the other file types by clicking on them as well. Each clicked filter will show a check mark next to it.

If you uncheck all the filetypes, all will be shown.

Other Filters

In addition to sorting by filetype, you can sort by many other means in the Filter pane. You can sort by Date Created, Date Modified, Orientation, Aspect Ratio, etc.

For example, you could filter to show only landscape pictures with a 2:3 ratio, created on January 21, 2003.

Ranking Files

You can rank files manually if the sorting options don't meet your needs. First, change the thumbnail display option to Large with Rank. Click in the Rank field under a thumbnail and enter numerical or alphabetical text, followed by pressing Enter (Return). If, for example, you assign ranks of 1, 2, and 3 to three of the thumbnails displayed, they would appear at the top of the list in their assigned order after you refresh the desktop view either by selecting Refresh Desktop View from the palette menu or by pressing F5.

Rank multiple selected files by accessing a context menu with a right-click (Ctrl-click) on a thumbnail. Remove the rankings from selected files by choosing Clear Rankings from the palette or context menu.

Image Information (Metadata)

The following standard information will appear in the Metadata (lower right) pane when a single thumbnail is selected: (Some formats may have more or less information.)

• Filename
• Document Type
• Date Created
• Date File Created
• Date File Modified
• File Size
• Dimensions
• Dimensions (in inches)
• Resolution
• Bit Depth
• Colour Mode

Camera Data (EXIF)

In addition to this basic information, Bridge can show much more information about your file. For example, if the image was taken by a digital camera, Camera Data (EXIF) from the image is also shown (scroll down in the Metadata pane to see more information). This can show you many important settings used by the photographer when the picture was taken. There is also a short summary of this data shown in the tan-coloured box at the top of the Metadata pane.

More Metadata

In addition to just reading the metadata from an image or file, Adobe Bridge can also write certain metadata to an image. This can be useful if you want to declare ownership of a particular photo, or if you just want to add extra information about it for your own purposes. You can find this metadata under IPTC Core in the Metadata pane. You can enter/edit the information here. Once you click away from the thumbnail (usually by clicking on another thumbnail), Bridge will ask you if you want to apply the metadata to the image. You can choose Apply, or Don't Apply.

Opening Files

Select one or more files and use any of the following methods to open them in Photoshop:

• Double-click on a thumbnail.
• Press the Enter (Return) key.
• Drag the thumbnail(s) out of Bridge into Photoshop (note that this can also be done from most places in a Windows or Mac environment).
• Choose the File > Open command in the palette menu (note that Bridge has many "Open" commands for open the document in different ways).

Renaming Files and Folders

Files and folders can be renamed. Click on the file name under the thumbnail to activate text editing mode, type a new name and then press Enter (Return). Text editing mode can also be activated by right-clicking (ctrl clicking on a Mac) the thumbnail and choosing Rename from the menu.

Batch Renaming

1. To rename all files in the current folder, ensure that the files are deselected. To rename a subset of files, select them.
2. Choose Batch Rename from the Tools menu. The Batch Rename dialog will be displayed.
3. In the Destination Folder section, choose between Rename in same folder, Move to other folder or Copy to other folder. For the latter options, use the Browse (Choose) button to navigate to the destination folder.
4. In the New Filename section of the dialog, you set options for the file name in a number of different drop down boxes. For example, if you wanted to batch rename your files to say "my_project_xxx" (where "xxx" is the sequence number), you could set the first option to Text, then beside it type in your name. Then you could delete the Date Time and the other Text options by clicking the minus button beside them.
5. In the Compatibility section, the current operating system is selected. If you want the file to be compatible with other operating systems, enable the appropriate check boxes.
6. Click OK.

Show/Hide Folders

You can show or hide the display of folders in the thumbnail list by toggling the View > Show Folders command in the menu.

Creating New Folders

Choose File > New Folder from the menu, type in a folder name and press Enter (Return).

Moving and Copying Files

Move by dragging files to different folders. To copy files to a different folder, hold the Alt (Option) key while dragging files to another folder.

Deleting Files

Selected files can be deleted in a number of ways:

• Click the Trash button.
• Drag files to the Trash button.
• Select Delete from the palette menu.
• Press the Backspace (Delete) key.

Different Views

The Adobe Bridge interface can be customized to your own liking by dragging the panes around much like you did in Photoshop, or you can choose from different preset views (workspaces) by clicking the 3 buttons (shown) at the bottom right of Bridge. These three buttons can be assigned to different preset workspaces by clicking and holding each button to get its flyout menu.

Rotating Image Thumbnails

Images can be rotated in Adobe Bridge. Once rotated, when they are opened, the images will be rotated in the image window too. To apply rotation, select a thumbnail and choose one of the following options from the Edit menu:

• Rotate 180 degrees
• Rotate 90 degrees CW (clockwise)
• Rotate 90 degrees CCW (counter-clockwise)

An alternative method is available using the Rotate buttons. Selected thumbnails will be rotated 90 degrees clockwise in the direction shown on the button, each time it is clicked.

Reveal File Location

To display the selected file(s) in Windows Explorer (Macintosh Finder), choose Reveal Location in Explorer (Reveal Location in Finder) from the right-click (ctrl-click) menu.

Export Cache

You can export the cache when burning CDs to save from having to generate thumbnails by using Build and Export Cache command from the Tools menu.

Adobe Bridge Summary

• Adobe Bridge allows you to view and manage image and other files on your hard drive or disks.
• Bridge is a standalone program that has a button to access it in the Photoshop interface, as well as from File > Browse.
• Adjust the size of image thumbnails by using slider at the bottom of the interface.
• Files can be sorted using a number of different criteria and you can apply filters to choose which thumbnails will be visible.
• Detailed image information along with a large thumbnail are displayed when a single file is selected.
• Camera data can be shown for images taken with a digital camera.
• Certain types of metadata can be entered in from Bridge and saved with the file.
• Files can be opened from Bridge as well as renamed, moved, copied, deleted and rotated.
• Folders can be created and renamed. They can also be displayed or hidden.
• The cache can be purged of thumbnail and image information. It can also be exported.

Adobe Bridge Keyboard Shortcuts:

• Refresh View: F5
• Select multiple contiguous thumbnails: Shift-click
• Select non-contiguous thumbnails: Alt-click (Option-click)
• Select all thumbnails: Ctrl-A (Cmd-A)
• Copy files to another folder: Alt (Option) while dragging files

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Photoshop - TOC - Introduction - Books -
New Images - Links - Questions - Quiz -
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Photoshop - TOC - Introduction - Books -
New Images - Links - Questions - Quiz -
1 - 2 - 3 - [ 4 ] - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 -