By default, nested with the Metadata palette is the Keywords palette. Keywords are important, because once you’ve applied one or more keywords to a photo, it’s that much easier to find that photo again by using the Adobe Bridge’s Find (search) function. For example, if you shoot flowers, you can add the keyword “calla lily” to every shot of a calla lily. Then, if later you wanted to quickly locate every shot you’ve taken of calla liliesyou just type “calla lily” in the Find dialog and all your calla lily photos appear in seconds. Did it seem like I just used the words “calla lily” a lot?
The Metadata palette gives you access to information that’s embedded into your photo by your digital camera at the moment you take the shot. By default, nested with the Metadata palette is the Keywords palette, which enables you to search for specific images by assigning keywords (that may sound complicated, but it’s actually pretty simple). We’ll start here with a simple look at how to access the embedded background information on your photos using the Metadata palette.
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The Preview palette in the Adobe Bridge is designed to give you a larger preview of the thumbnail images that you click on in the main window. Although the Preview palette looks like a one-trick pony, there are a few hidden little features that can make it a much more useful tool.
Bigger Previews are Just a Double-Click Away
When you’re in the Default Workspace (found in the View menu under Workspace), you’ll see the Preview palette in the middle of the Panel areaand the preview is so small you’re probably wondering why Adobe included it at all. It’s because there’s more to it than meets the eye (well, at least at first). You can make the preview much larger by double-clickingnot on the Preview tabbut instead directly on the Folders (or Favorites) tab above it. This will collapse (hide) the Folders palette (and the nested Favorites palette) so that only their tabs are visible, expanding the viewing area of the Preview palette upward. If you need the preview even bigger, then double-click on the Metadata (or Keywords) tab in the bottom left of the Panel area to collapse them, expanding the Preview palette even more. This works particularly well when you’re viewing a portrait-oriented photo (tall rather than wide). However, when you have a photo in landscape orientation, to get the preview much larger you’ll also have to expand the width of the Panel area by clicking on the center tab on the divider bar (along the right side of the Panel area) and dragging it to the right. (Note: To make any collapsed palette visible again, just double-click directly on its tab name.)
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Back in Photoshop CS, you had little control over the look of the File Browser, but with the Adobe Bridge, you’ve got a number of options for personalizing the look and feel. But not only that, you also have more control over what information will be displayed. Here’s how to set up your Bridge your way:
Setting Your Background
You have three basic choices for the background color that will appear behind your thumbnails: black, white, or some shade of gray. To set your background color, go under the Bridge menu (on a Mac) or the Edit menu (on a PC) and choose Preferences. When the Preferences dialog appears, with General selected (in the list on the left side of the dialog), you’ll see the Background slider under the Thumbnails section. Just drag the slider where you want it (I chose a medium gray), and then click OK.
The Adobe Bridge has five built-in “layouts” for different working styles (Adobe calls them “workspaces”), and the default Bridge layout is divided into two main sections: (1) the main window that displays thumbnail versions of your photos; (2) a Panel area to the left of that (with palettes for navigating to your photos, for seeing larger previews of your thumbnails, and for viewing metadata and adding keywords). We’ll look at this default layout and special built-in workspaces that have been designed to make navigating to your images even easier.
Navigating to Your Photos
The left side of the Bridge is called the Panel area (although they’re really palettes, they’re just not “floating palettes”like the rest of the palettes in Photoshopbecause they have to stay within the Panel area). The top-left palette is the Favorites, which is designed to give you direct access to your most-used applications and image folders. Nested right behind this palette is the Folders palette, which you use to locate photos on your digital camera’s memory card, on your hard drive, on a CD of images, a network driveyou name it. The idea behind this palette is simple: It gives you access to your digital camera images without having to leave the Bridge. To access the photos inside a folder from here, just click once on the folder.
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Okay, we’ve backed up our originals and burned them to CD, we’ve created a contact sheet to keep track of all our images on that CD; so now we’re going to open the images right from the CD using the Adobe Bridge (which is technically a separate application that we can use to sort and categorize our digital camera images). If you’re familiar with the File Browser from previous versions, it’s an evolution of it, but it has more features, and best of all, also manages images for use in other Adobe applications.
Okay, your CD of digital negatives is burned; but before you go any further, you can save yourself a lot of time and frustration down the road if you create a CD-jewel-case-sized contact sheet now. That way, when you pick up the CD, you’ll see exactly what’s on the disc before you even insert it into your computer. Luckily, the process of creating this contact sheet is automated, and after you make a few decisions on how you want your contact sheet to look, Photoshop takes it from there.
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Okay, I know this is the Adobe Bridge post, but before you even open the Bridge, you’ve got to save your digital negatives to CD. Don’t open the photos, adjust them, choose your favorites, and then burn them to a CD; burn them nowright off the bat. These are your “digital negatives,” which are no different from the negatives you’d get from a film lab after they’ve processed your film. By burning a CD now, before you enter the Bridge, you’re creating a set of digital negatives that can never be accidentally erased or discardedyou’ll always have these digital negatives. Here’s how:
