Folders And Favorites

At the top of the left column in Bridge CS4 is where we find the Folders and Favorites panels. By default, the Folders panel is open, but we can switch between the two panels simply by clicking on their name tabs. The Folders panel is our main way of navigating through the folders on our computer, displaying them in a familiar "tree" structure. Click on the triangle to the left of a folder to twirl it open and reveal the folders inside it. Continue making your way down through the folder structure until you reach the one that contains your images, then click directly on the folder's name to display its contents in the Contents panel:

Clicking on the Favorites name tab will switch us to the Favorites panel, which is where we can store folders that we access often so we can get to them quickly without having to manually navigate to them each time in the Folders panel. In fact, Favorites acts very much like Bookmarks in a web browser. We'll see how to add our own favorites later, but by default, Adobe adds a few of its own that they assume we'll need to access often, like our Desktop, as well as our main Documents and Pictures folders. Click on any of them to jump right to them:

Filter And Collections

Below the Folders and Favorites panels in the left column are the Filter and Collections panels. The Filter panel is open by default, but again, we can switch between them by clicking on their name tabs. Earlier, we saw that we can filter the images displayed in the Content panel according to star ratings and labels, but you ain't seen nothin' yet. The Filter panel takes it to a whole new level. In fact, the amount of options we're given for narrowing down exactly which images are displayed borders on crazy. We can filter images based on file type, date created, aspect ratio, the ISO speed, aperture and exposure time, the lens and focal length that was used, the type of camera, the serial number of the camera, and more! We can even combine multiple filter options to really narrow things down. Like I said, crazy!

To turn any of the filter options on, simply click on the triangle to the left of a category's name to twirl it open, then click on any of the filter options inside it. For example, here I've twirled open the Orientation category, which tells me that 16 of the images in the current folder are in Landscape mode while the other 16 are in Portrait mode. The Filter panel automatically searches through all of the images in the folder and populates itself with this information. If I want to view only the Landscape images, I can just click on the Landscape option, which places a checkmark to the left of the option's name, letting me know the filter is now active:

To turn a filter off, simply click on it again. Or, if you have multiple filters active and need to turn them all off at once, click on the circle with the diagonal line through it (the universal symbol for Ghostbusters) in the bottom right corner of the Filter panel to clear all filters instantly.

We'll save the discussion on the Collections panel for later, but essentially, Collections allow us to gather up multiple images, whether they're all in the same folder or scattered all over your computer's hard drive, and save them as a collection so we can view them all together as if they were in the same folder. We can even create Smart Collections which let's Bridge automatically add images to a collection for us based on criteria we set, but again, we'll save that for later.

The Content Panel

The middle column in Bridge CS4 is home to the Content panel, which displays thumbnail versions of the images inside the folder we've selected. The default size of the thumbnails is very small, too small to make them of much use, but we can easily increase the size of the thumbnails by dragging the slider along the bottom of the Bridge interface. Drag it towards the right to increase their size, or towards the left to decrease it. You can also click on the rectangle icons on either end of the slider to jump to the next largest size (the right rectangle) or the next smallest size (the left rectangle):

There's lots of other ways we can customize the display in the Contents panel which we'll look at later.

Preview Panel

At the top of the right column in Bridge CS4 is the Preview panel, which displays a larger preview of the image that's selected in the Content panel. At least, the idea of the Preview panel is that it should display a larger version of the image. The problem is, by default, the preview image is not much bigger than the thumbnails in the Content panel, and you don't have to increase the size of the thumbnails very much for them to actually appear larger than the preview! However, what we're seeing here is only the default size and location of the Preview panel. As with most things in Bridge CS4, there's ways to customize it, which we'll see later:

Metadata And Keywords

Below the Preview panel in the right column in Bridge CS4 are the Metadata and Keywords panels, both extremely valuable and important when it comes to viewing information about an image and being able to search for and find images later. The Metadata panel is open by default and displays all the details we need, like the date the photo was taken, the camera settings, file size, file type, color mode and bit depth, whether or not the flash fired, and lots more! Use the scroll bar along the right to scroll through all of the information. We can also use the Metadata panel to add additional details to the image, like the photographer's name and contact information. We'll take a closer look at the Metadata panel later:

If we click on the Keywords name tab at the top, we switch from the Metadata panel to the Keywords panel which allows us to assign descriptive keywords to our images so we can easily find them later simply by searching for images that contain those keywords. We can even use the keywords to have Bridge automatically add images to Smart Collections. We'll look at Smart Collections and everything we need to know to use the Keywords panel effectively in another tutorial:

And there we have it! That's our quick look at Adobe Bridge CS4!

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