Lessons

Lesson Info

Collections

Now what we want to do is we want tio for a few minutes, focus on saved searches, ok, so there are times when you would like tio when it would behoove you to save a search, ok, searches that you find yourself performing over and over and over and over ok saved searches or called collections, and I've got my stuck art folder going on here get down to some of the fall looking stuff that's pretty on screen, so what we can do is save a search criteria that we can use over and over and over we can do it manually. We can also have bridge populate those safe searches automatically. So let's say, for example, that we have applied the key words of malley flowers to all of the photos of that type that exists already, but you're going to shoot more flowers, right? Course you are, you are. So if you import more photos for a sign keywords to more photos, even if you something else to import them with other than bridge, then those safe searches can populate themselves automatically, much like he can...

do in my photo where any program that has facial recognition so that you train it, tio know who have faces? Well, if I start tagging those photos with facial information, then when I import more photos and that information matches those photos go into that folder automatically I don't have to go in there and add them, so if I set up a a smart us saved search that smart on malley flower keywords and then when I import more photos that have those key words are automatically going to show up in that search without me having to do anything which can be really handy. And of course you can also use save searches for let's say you're hunting around for art to use in the design and maybe work in a team environment and you need to have that aren't approved by the art director or you need to have that aren't approved by a client or somebody needs to choose from an array of art for the piece we'll save searches would be a great way to handle that as well. So let's, take a look at a few instances of that let's start out with gathering photos for a project. Okay, so here we are in my stock art folder and let's say, I'm hunting for photos to use in a fall promotion, ok for somebody? So I've got a bunch of photos here the first thing I want to do is I want to create a place where I can shove those photos so that I can get back to them easily, so we're going to do that with a collection and that's just a saved search that's all it isthe. Okay, the collections panel appears at the bottom left of your interface. If you're in this essentials uh, workspace if you don't see that panel for some reason tried up to the window menu and choose collections and again, anything with the check mark here means that panel is turned on somewhere on your screen. So here we are in the collections panel at the bottom left and it's very similar to setting at key words. Ok, you've got a tool icons down here. The one with the plus sign creates a new collection, the one next to it that has the microscopic gear icon on it. That's a smart collection. Okay, so that's one that we can set up criteria with and if that cart iria is meant in the future with new images, they go in there automatically. And this does not mean that you're duplicating any images. You're really setting up a shortcut or an alias a pointer to that image so let's, go ahead and create one so let's make a new collection calls the amounts we can see includes selective files in collection. No, I must have had some files selected. Ok, so a bridge made us a collection. It looks like one of those business folders that you tie together okay so we could name anything we want so let's say we're going to make a new brochure for etown so we'll call this e town fall promo now I'm making this a little bit longer stop it I'm making the cell of a bit of a longer name because I'm really not going to be searching for this these collections all stay in this panel and you can have as many of them as you want so this isn't something I'm going to be typing in repetitive lee so I'm not trying to abbreviate it so when you finish press return now when we're cruising through that star got the start art folder stocked art folder say that ten times fast stock cars took our star kurt it's hard so perhaps these three images might work so I can click one to activate it shift click to activate the last one and everything in between will automatically be activated and I can drag those into my collection now we're cruising through our our folder again and I think maybe that one would work for this project and then maybe this one might work for the project so toe activate another file that's not consecutive we're going to command click on a mac or control click on a pc and then we can drag that into that folder and you could just keep doing that so we'll add a couple more just for the fun of it so now any time I want to get back to that folder let's say I'm doing all this other kind of stuff in bridge you know I'm back over here my art director comes along with the client you know oh hey I need you to pick this photo very quickly then click that collection and all the photos were right there okay so I'm gonna increase the size of my thumbnails and you can see this is a fabulous way to compare photos for a project oftentimes when I'm cruising around on you know frittoli or what have you I see a slew of files that would work I don't know which one the client's gonna like best and even when I'm looking at a slew of files that would all work I often times really can't find him and narrow down which one is going to work the best until I see them side by side and that's just not something that you can do easily on any stock art excite at all yes they all have a feature called a light box but it gives you postage stamp size previews of all the files that you've put in a light box I don't find that to be all that helpful I need to see larger previews okay another great thing about searching for art compiling artwork in this way or even first photographers let's say you're trying to create your best of the best portfolio and obviously you can't put all of your images in there because you've got so many great ones right? You've got an opportunity maybe going to be featured in the magazine okay digital photography today or something like that you need to pick your five best photos can you imagine where would you even start? You might start with the rating system which we're going to talk about later but let's say you narrowed it down teo you know twenty or so photos then you can use this collection to really see them side by side so not only can you use this fabulous zoom for your preview we're looking him side by side like this but you can create an instant slide show yeah so we've got this folder active right here and it's our collection or saved surge then we could simply go up to the view menu and choose slide show I think it's going to change on a man really? Yes, how about that now you can sit back, have a sip of your favorite beverage while you call it in plate how wonderful your photos are or which images might be better suited for that particular design project that you're doing ok so that's a one use of safe searches instant slide shows really great and you could do instant slideshow on any folder doesn't have to be a collection and then keep in this press escape to exit the slide show and we're going to talk more about side shoes a little bit later on um so that is just a regular old save search that's not anything that's going to populate itself that's emmanuelle dragon drop situation now let's look at creating what's called the smart search so this is one that will populate itself automatically one more thing before we go over to there if you decide you want to remove an image from a collection all you have to do is control click on it and from the menu that appears just cheese removed from collection and then that would disappears so is the client saying they will not that one not that one or the art director not that one not that one thing you can keep find meaning it like that and these hang around until you throw him away they don't take up hard drive space I mean it's a tiny little text file okay if you want to delete it for some reason let's say you've got a bunch of collections and that that project is over then you could just click to activate it and click the little trash can icon at the bottom right of that particular panel so now let's take a look at creating a smart search and you do that by clicking the little folder icon with the gear or the sprocket at the bottom right? Okay, so what we're going to do is give that a click and let's create a smart search based on our manly flowers, right? So when you tell a bridge what photo, what folder to look in and I'm going to tell it to look inside this one folder so for example, you know, if you use the naming structure that we talked about earlier she location as your directory than you could choose that here, but I happen to the mountie flowers are inside that folder, so now we're going tio tell bridge that we wanted to look at the key words inside that folder case of viewers contains or this could be your pictures folder just doesn't matter keywords contains malley and I'll add one more field for key words contained flowers. If all car here met please do bridge look inside the sub folders if you don't mind and then I would name, of course is going to give me a naming opportunity for my smart search right here that is a little bit confusing about the smarter searches is you get that when you do a smart search, you get that find dialog box but there's no naming opportunity there you have to wait till after you create the collection so here's where I would name this one malley flowers okay, so forever more until I throw that smart search away anytime I add the keywords maui or flowers to any photo with any application even if it was a light room okay and you've got to save search over here in bridge if you've put maui flowers is a key word on that photo then they will populate they will appear in this folder anyway so that's a really, really anything here's another interesting way that you might use a smart search back to the designer side of life so as you all know, I write these big honking books and I'm a designer so do you think I let a riley handle my artwork no way no how I do all my own art all my own screen shots all my own call out all my own phase all of them so I work with that art a lot so as I'm doing these books especially when I'm going from one version to the next I often times need to find a figure from another version you know? What did the screen shot looked like in the last version of the book so on and so forth so one easy way for me to find those figures would be to make a smart collection for anything that includes f b I g and the file name and then that will take me straight to those figures and I can see all of them kind of see how I laid it out last time because I don't know if you all know this but any time you've got a book, especially one of this size, not just mine, but any book that's large, it is really difficult to get publishers, first of all, to print a book that large because you know, trees and money and all that kind of stuff paper, but because you're limited on page count, I have tio make my screen shots as small as possible because I want you to have the most information in this book that is humanly possible, so you'll see in a lot of my screen shots, I only show the part of the panel that is necessary for the thing that I'm teaching on that page there's. So, for example, in this shot, this is a layers panel where there's a bunch more to that layers panel hick it would go all the way down to you know the bottom of the page, but because I'm concerned with page count because of my publishers criteria, I personally shrink, everything is small as I can, and I even rebuild dialog boxes because, you know, in dialogue boxes, there's a lot of free space, right? So I put a lot of time into these screen shots, trying to make them a small as they possibly can so that I can pack in more information into that book within a given page count. So I often times need to refer back to the screen shot of the last version to see how did I lay it out? How much of that dialogue or panel did I show? Where did I faded out in that kind of thing? So let's free another smart search so we're down here in our collection panel so let's click the new smart search button and we're going to tell photo shop where to look or bridge where to look I'm gonna tell it to look in one of these book files okay? So then I'm going to say file name contains fig and weird and delete the second line and criteria and shoes save and that's the point where you can give it a name ok, so we're going to call this one um p s six in in figs right now over here in the content panel foot a bridge did what it was supposed to do. So what? Showing me that information but it's folders, right? So let's flatten the view and you'll find really quickly that you can't flat in the view when you're looking at a selection isn't that something? So how do we flatten the view we use a soul chevron? There isn't one next to that now maybe you could do it? No, I can't even do it with the view many so that is one drawback for creating smart collections when you've got sub folders going on is that for some reason you can't make bridge flattened that view but that's no big deal because we can simply go into the folder once bridge has found all those folders and then once we're inside another folder not just inside the smart collection, then we can flatten the view like that so I could quickly see all of the art that I prepared for you know that particular book so it's real handy for me, you know, publishing books like that because I often need to refer back to this are so I'm sure they're similar situations for all of you all as well, and if you re name all of your files for whatever reason in bridge or if you move them within bridge, these collections will stay intact if you remain files or move them outside of bridge meaning and windows explorer or in the mac os in the finder, your connections to these collections will be lost okay, unless you've used distributed caches god, it just sounds so g he doesn't and again the distribute caches is telling bridge through preferences. Put those thumb nail files those preview caches in the folder where the images live and if you do that way, then you khun moveon rename things in your computer's os and it won't break your collections but if you're using a central cash which is what you used by default then you just got to make sure that you do all your found management within bridge if you set up collections questions in the audience always had a plenty of questions coming in as usual kind of a higher level question when you're setting the stuff up ceo dominion it's wondering any tricks and knowing what searches you will need in the future any favorite searches you have saved or any tricks on naming to remember what the searches a year later oh well, the great thing about in great questions by the way that the wonderful thing about these save searches they all show up right here okay, so you really don't have tio there is so much about memorizing what you've done because it's all right here I think where the confusion is this you know you can add key words and all that kind of good stuff to your files and you're searching on this stuff but the's are saved searches and they stay right here in this collection's panel until you throw them away so you really don't have to I worry too much about remembering what you did that's an answer to one part of the question the second part of the question is any things that I found help helpful for me and my own work flow definitely for my own photography I like keeping these smart collections or smart safe searches based on keyword information that I have applied, I'm a huge fan of macro photography, especially flowers in my favorite place in the world is she is malik, because the colors are so brilliant, and so I have safe searches for caylee. Flowers also have safe search, which is just on macro. So anything that's, you know, macro on dh, then for design, safe searches for client projects or even if you're not let's, say, you're making your own business card is a photographer, so if you're trying to find images for your own business card in your building it, you know, as a photographer, then a saved search. Not a smart search, but a safe search on some of the photos that you think might work well on your business card would be great. So any time you find yourself comparing multiple things, multiple art, then that's a great opportunity for a collection if you want that collection to populate itself, if those conditions are going to be met again in the future, then create a smart collection out of it.