Refine

Directly to the right of the Get Photos From Camera icon is the Refine option. The name is a little vague, but clicking on the icon gives us quick access to three important features - Review Mode, which lets us view and compare multiple images in a cool, 3D carousel-style format, Batch Rename for renaming multiple images at once, and File Info, which let's us view and edit tons and tons of information about the currently selected image:

Camera Raw

Next is the Open In Camera Raw icon. Camera Raw is a whole other topic for a whole other series of tutorials, but if you shoot with a high end camera and your images were saved in your camera's native raw format, click this icon to open and edit them in the Camera Raw dialog box. You can also open JPEG and TIFF images inside Camera Raw:

Output To Web Or PDF

The last icon along the top left of Bridge CS4 is the Output option. Clicking on it switches you to the Output workspace (we'll cover workspaces in another tutorial) with options for outputting images to either a web gallery or to the PDF format:

Workspaces

Along the top right of the Bridge CS4 interface is a series of workspaces (Essentials, Filmstrip, Metadata, etc.) that we can choose from simply by clicking on the name of the one we want to select. Workspaces change the layout of the panels in Bridge as well as the panels that are displayed on screen. The currently selected workspace is highlighted:

The default workspace is Essentials, but different workspaces can be better suited to what we're doing in Bridge. For example, the Essentials workspace offers a good general purpose layout, but if you're trying to preview your images, those little thumbnails in the Content panel aren't much use, and neither is the not-much-bigger Preview panel in the top right corner. A better workspace for previewing images is Filmstrip. I'll select it by clicking on its name, and we can see that we now have a much bigger preview of the image, with the Content panel now moved to the bottom and displaying the thumbnails in a more convenient horizontal row:

The four workspaces shown along the top of Bridge are not the only ones available to us. Click on the down-pointing triangle directly to the right of the word Output to view the complete list of workspaces, including any custom workspaces you've created. I'm going to switch back to the default Essentials workspace so we can carry on with our tour.

The Search Box

To the right of the workspaces is your standard search box, which allows you to use Bridge to search for files within either the current folder or any sub folders inside the current folder:

Compact Mode

In the very top right corner of Bridge is the Compact Mode icon:

Clicking on it switches Bridge to Compact mode, which, true to its name, is a small, compact version of Bridge that displays only your image thumbnails and a few navigation options along the top. This mode is handy when you want to keep Bridge open on your screen as you're working in Photoshop (or any of the other Creative Suite programs) because it always remains in front of any open programs. It's also handy for moving or copying files between different folders, since you can have two separate copies of Bridge open at once, making it easy to drag images and files from one Bridge window to another. We'll see how to do that later. To switch back to Bridge's normal size while in Compact mode, click on the Full Mode icon in the top right corner:

You can also switch between Compact and Full modes by pressing the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Enter (Win) / Command+Return (Mac).

Thumbnail Quality Options

Below the workspaces in the top right of Bridge are two icons that allow us to change the quality of the thumbnails we see in the Content panel. The reason we'd want to change the quality of them is because it can take a long time for Bridge to generate high quality previews, especially if you're working with lots of high resolution images. Clicking the icon on the left tells Bridge not to generate previews at all. Instead, it will use the preview that's already embedded with the image file. This is the fastest way to load the thumbnails but it's not recommended.

Clicking the icon on the right opens a menu with a few quality choices. Selecting the first option, Prefer Embedded (Faster) is the same thing as clicking the icon on the left. Why Adobe would give us two different ways to choose the worst possible option, I don't know. The default option is Always High Quality which is the one I use and I'd recommend you leave it selected if you don't run into any serious performance problems. Some people prefer the High Quality On Demand option, which loads low quality thumbnails to begin with and only generates high quality versions when you click on a thumbnail. This is a faster method, but I like to always see high quality thumbnails. The choice is yours:

Filtering Images By Rating

One of the best features of Bridge is that it allows us to assign different star ratings and labels to our images. Ratings make it easy to separate our best images (5 stars) from the worst (no stars), while labels can be used, for example, to separate images that are still waiting for client approval from ones already approved. We'll see how to add ratings and labels later, but we can filter the images we see in the Content panel according to their rating or label by clicking on the Filter Items By Rating icon (the star) to the right of the thumbnail quality options and choosing a filter option from the list. To go back to viewing all images, select the Clear Filter option at the top:

Sorting Options

To the right of the Filter option is the Sorting option which changes the criteria for how the thumbnails are displayed in the Content panel. Here, I'm sorting my images manually, but if you click on the option, a menu will appear with lots of different options we can select, including by file name, file type, file size, and so on. Click on the upward-pointing arrow to the right of the sorting option to change the order from ascending to descending, or the down-pointing arrow (it flips direction when you click on it) to switch from descending to ascending:

Rotating Images

If an image in the Content panel is sitting on its side and needs to be rotated, simply click on it to select it, then click on one of the two Rotate icons directly below the search box. The left icon will rotate the image 90° counterclockwise, the right icon rotates it 90° clockwise (if you didn't guess that one already). You can rotate multiple images at once by holding down your Ctrl (Win) / Command (Mac) key and clicking on the ones you need, then clicking on one of the Rotate icons:

Open Recent Files

To the right of the Rotate icons is the Open Recent Files option, which is yet another way to jump to any files we've recently opened. Click on the icon to view a list of the files, then click on the name of the one you want to open:

Create A New Folder

To create a new folder inside the folder that's currently open, click on the New Folder icon. When the new folder appears in the Content panel, its name will automatically be highlighted. Simply type the name you want to give it, then press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) to accept it:

Deleting An Item

Finally, rounding out the icons and options along the top of the Bridge CS4 interface is the Delete Item icon. Click on the item you want to delete, then click on the trash bin icon. Then click OK when Bridge asks if you're absolutely certain you want to delete it:

Up next, we'll look at the various panels that make up the default Bridge CS4 interface!

New! Download our Photoshop tutorials as convenient, print-ready PDFs!

Go to page: 1 | 2 | 3