Photoshop
New Images
Adobe Bridge
Adobe Bridge is a relatively new feature for Adobe products, including Photoshop. It was introduced with Photoshop CS2. 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 in CS5 or the CS3 version.)
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.
Bridge displays a great deal of information about the selected image and provides many tools for managing files. Because there are so many options, we're going to discuss the more common functions of Bridge so we can get back to learning Photoshop.
In the next lecture, we'll look at Photoshop's Mini-Bridge, which is a scaled down version of Bridge. You'll see some similarities in the layout and controls.
Older versions of Photoshop (Photoshop 7.0 and CS) used the File Browser, which performed similarly to Adobe Bridge, although Adobe Bridge is much more powerful.
Opening Adobe Bridge
The Adobe Bridge button is displayed at the top left of the Photoshop interface in the Application bar. As well, you can open Bridge by going to File > Browse in Bridge....
Bridge will open up as a separate application outside Photoshop.
Bridge Structure
There's a great deal of information packed into Bridge so we'll look at the general layout first.
Right under the title bar there are two rows of functions including a Toolbar for navigating, workspace presets, and a search box. The main body of the Bridge interface is divided into five separate panes. Folders and Favourites are used to navigate to the files you want to open in Bridge. In the next pane you can enhance search capabilities by using Filters and Collections and access exporting functions. The Content pane is used to display file names and thumbnails and preview them in the Preview pane. In the last pane you can find detailed information about each file and you can assign keywords to files to help you in file searches. Controls at the bottom of Bridge are used to change your view of the Content pane.
Workspace Presets
Like Photoshop, Bridge has preset workspaces with a default one named Essentials. Clicking the downward-facing arrow will open up the presets menu.
The workspace presets menu lists additional presets and there are familiar commands for resetting a workspace, creating a new custom workspace, deleting a workspace and resetting all the standard (preset) workspaces.
The Filmstrip preset is worthy of a special mention. It provides a nice alternative to Essentials. The Metadata and Keywords panes aren't displayed, allowing for a large preview window to better see the images.
Navigating
The pane in the upper left contains two tabbed panels: Favourites and Folders. Favourites are like shortcuts to your most commonly-used folders. You drag and drop a folder onto this panel to create a Favourite.
The Folders panel 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 too.
Content Viewing Options
The controls at the bottom right of the Bridge interface provide various options for viewing files in the Content pane.
- Thumbnail Size Slider
-
The size of the image thumbnails can be changed by dragging the Thumbnail Size slider. Sliding to the left makes them smaller and sliding to the right makes them larger. The small button to the left of the slider will make the thumbnails smaller by a preset amount. The larger button to the right of the slider will enlarge thumbnails by a preset amount. You can repeatedly click these buttons to keep scaling the thumbnails.
To the right of the slider are four buttons (enlarged here) for choosing the way images and their file information will be displayed. Images demonstrating the following settings are rather large so we've placed them together on a separate page. The Filmstrip preset was in effect.
- Lock Thumbnail Grid
- Thumbnails and their files names are organized in a visible grid. If the content isn't currently displayed as thumbnails, selecting this option will switch to that view.
- View Content as Thumbnails
- This option displays the thumbnails and their file names without a grid.
- View Content as Details
- A large thumbnail is displayed along with the dates the file was created and last modified, the file size, image format, dimensions, resolution, colour profile, and any other metadata.
- View Content as List
- Each thumbnail is in its own row with information about the file organized into columns.
Sorting Files
You can sort the contents of a particular folder using various criteria. The current sorting order is displayed under the Search box in the upper right section of the interface. In the example shown here, the current sort order is set to Sort by Filename. Clicking on the downward-facing black arrow will open a drop-down menu. The default is always By Filename, which will sort 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 sorting options. With the Manually option, you can click and drag a file to another spot in the list.
Clicking the up or down facing triangle next to the current sort order will toggle the order between ascending and descending.
Rating Files
You can assign ratings of one to five stars to images and then sort by their ratings using the By Rating command in the Sort menu (above).
There are two ways to rate an image. Start by selecting an image in the Content pane that you want to rate.
- Open the Label menu and select a rating of 1-5 stars.
- Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-[1-5] (Cmd-[1-5]). For example, to apply a five-star rating, press Ctrl-5 (Cmd-5).
As you can see in the menu, there are other rating options. You can remove a rating using the No Rating command or using its shortcut Ctrl-0 (Cmd-0), mark an images as rejected, and increase or decrease an image's rating. The Label portion of the menu allows you to apply labels to images.
The image at the right shows two files that have been rated.
Filtering Files
Using the Filter Pane
The Filter pane can be used to "filter out" certain files, so that you only see the ones you want to. There are many options available for filtering. This example shows some of the filter options.
The first filter criteria is called File Type. Only the file types contained in the current folder will be shown. In this example, the current folder contains one EPS, one JPEG, two Photoshop files, and one TIFF.
We wanted to see only the Photoshop documents so we clicked on that row. Notice that a check mark appears to the left of Photoshop document and the text in that row became bold. You can add the other file types by clicking on them as well. You could also click JPEG and the Content pane would display only PSDs and JPEGs. Each clicked filter will show a check mark next to it.
If you uncheck all the file types, all will be shown again.
In addition to sorting by file type, you can sort by many other criteria in the Filter pane. You can sort by Date Created, Date Modified, Orientation, Aspect Ratio, etc. For example, if you wanted to see only Photoshop documents edited on September 22, 2010, you could click on the Photoshop file type and then 9/22/10 in the Date Modified section.
Filter Items By Rating
This option has its own menu above the Content pane and works in the same manner as the Filter pane. The filter option you select in this menu will display only those images that match the criteria. To clear a filter you've applied, use the Clear Filter command.
Metadata
Metadata is data that describes other data. In terms of images, a great deal of information (data) is stored or embedded in an image file that describes the image itself. This includes the date it was created, the image dimensions, its resolution, and so on.
Bridge displays the data that is embedded in a file in the Metadata pane when a single thumbnail is selected. The metadata is broken down into categories such as File Properties, Camera Data (EXIF), etc., as shown here. These categories vary depending on the type of image that's selected. Each of the categories is collapsed as indicated by the triangles facing to the right. To expand a category, click on it.
File Properties
The following standard information will appear in the Metadata pane. Some file formats may have more or less information. Some of the file properties are summarized in a box at the top right of the Metadata pane.
- Filename
- Document Type
- Date Created
- Date File Modified
- File Size
- Dimensions
- Bit Depth
- Colour Mode
- Colour Profile
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, the Camera Data (EXIF) category is displayed. This provides many important settings used by the photographer when the picture was taken. There is additional camera information shown in the box at the top left of the Metadata pane.
Adding 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 by clicking and all fields will become editable. When you're finished, press Enter (Return) to close editing mode. You can also click away from the thumbnail (usually by clicking on another thumbnail) when you're finished editing. Bridge will ask you if you want to apply the metadata to the image. You can choose Apply or Don't Apply.
Selecting Files
- To select a single file, click on its thumbnail in the Content pane. A large thumbnail of the image will be displayed in the Preview pane of Bridge.
- To select multiple contiguous files, click on the first thumbnail and then Shift-click the last thumbnail in the series. Thumbnails of each file will appear in the Preview pane.
- 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.
Opening Files
Use any of the following methods to open files in Photoshop.
- Double-click on a thumbnail.
- Right-click (Ctrl-click) on a thumbnail and choose Open from the context menu.
-
After selecting one or more files:
- 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. However, in the Mac environment, the Application Frame must be enabled so that the drop target is recognized as Photoshop.)
-
Choose the File > Open command in the Bridge menu. (Note that Bridge has variations of the Open command to open documents in different ways.)
- Press the Enter (Return) key.
Renaming Files and Folders
Files and folders can be renamed in the Content pane. Click on the file name under the selected 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) the thumbnail and choosing Rename from the context menu.
Show/Hide Folders
You can show or hide the display of folders in the thumbnail list by toggling the Show Folders command in the View menu.
Creating New Folders
Go to File > New Folder or click the New Folder icon under the Search box (shown).
Type a new name for the folder in the Content pane 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 and Folders
Selected files and folders can be deleted in a number of ways:
- Click the Delete (trashcan) button (shown).
- Drag files and/or folders to the Delete button.
- Select Move to Trash from the context menu.
- Press the Backspace (Delete) key.
A dialog box may open asking, "Are you sure you want to move [file or folder name] to the Trash?" Click the OK button to confirm.
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 in Bridge....
- Bridge has workspace presets that let you choose from standard layouts or create your own workspace.
- The Favourites and Folders pane provide two ways to navigate through your folder hierarchy and locate files.
- Adjust the size of image thumbnails by using slider at the bottom of the interface.
- The options for viewing files in the Content pane are:
- Lock Thumbnail Grid
- View Content as Thumbnails
- View Content as Details
- View Content as List
- 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.
- You can rate and label files and use these as sorting or filter criteria.
- The Metadata pane provides a great deal of information about an image including file properties. Camera data can be shown for images taken with a digital camera.
- Certain types of metadata can be entered in the IPTC Core section 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.
Adobe Bridge Keyboard Shortcuts:
- Select multiple contiguous thumbnails: Shift-click
- Select non-contiguous thumbnails: Ctrl-click (Cmd-click)
- Select all thumbnails: Ctrl-A (Cmd-A)
- Copy files to another folder: Alt (Option) while dragging files
- Apply ratings to a file: Ctrl-[1-5] (Cmd-[1-5])
- Remove ratings from a file: Ctrl-0 (Cmd-0)
Photoshop - TOC - Introduction - Books -
New Images - Links - Questions -
1 - 2 - 3 - [ 4 ] - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 -
