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Lesson Info

Creating PDFs

So the next thing we're going to take a look at is creating pds out of bridge contact sheets pay and again that's just a way to gang up several images on a single page it khun b or multiple pages it can be very helpful let's say back over here in our town fall promo let's say the client isn't in my office or the art director isn't in my office and I need to email these things to them or, you know, sin these photos to them in a in a manner where they can see them all okay, you can easily do that with the contact sheets was a great way to getting it files for design as well as to show your photography clients let's say you did a shoot and they need to pick out which ones they want prince of which one they like the best so creating a contact sheet of all those images that you can just print out you know, small because you don't want to give away big images, right? So you put him out really, really small and then the client can have something physical in their hand and say, oh, I like that...

one better than that one so they could circle them, you know can't want prince of that one that one and that one, that kind of thing, so contact sheets air really handy so let's take a look at how to you create one and bridge so the first thing you need to do of course is tell bridge which photos you want to work with so you need tio activate the folder and it could be a folder on your hard drive it could be a folder that lives in your favorites pail here or it could be one of our saved search is one of our collections doesn't matter just what is what has gathered up those images or you could do you know a regular search and gather up the images they don't even have to live in a folder per se but you do have still bridge which images you want to put in this contact sheet so we've got our etown fault promo so it's come over here to the content panel inlets activate all of them by pressing command aor control eh on a pc now you can do a couple different things of course can you always do almost the same thing six different ways and all of the adobe at I'm really happy because it helps me have a job so we can come up here to the top of the bridge window and we can choose what's called the output modules output module is just a fancy way of saying output workspace it's just another arrangement of your panels in bridge that is conducive to creating pdf ce that's it look cryptic so you can click this icon right here and then choose output toe web or pdf or you can scoot over here to your default workspaces and just click output I think it's easier just to clip out but it will take a second or three for bridge to change the work space so it doesn't happen instantly in other words so once you're in the output modules see how our whole bridge world has changed now are content panel is down here at the bottom and now that previous panel that used to be over here the top price is taken center stage here and we've got a folder view for the whole left side of the screen so that's interesting so here the content panel at the bottom is showing you all the images that are going to be included in this pdf okay so now let's come over here to the right hand side of the screen which is completely changed and we've not seen this panel before this is the output panel and you can output images in two different ways and bridge the canal put them as a pdf in a web gallery we're gonna look at web gallery later on so let's click pdf ok so now that pdf is active and you know it's active because it's got that little line around it okay, you get a template menu right here in these are all the different templates all what eight of them all the different templates that you have in bridge with each version, we tend to get a couple more, but you can also save your own. So we're going to use the settings on the right hand side here to create a custom pdf that we can save. Ok, I will tell you that saving any of the customization is that you make in the output module was a new feature and c s five if you can even believe that it wasn't in from the beginning. Okay? When adobe first created this output module, which was back in cs four, I believe they took this functionality out of photo shop, stuffed it in the bridge and kind of messed it up a little bit. It was really disabled while you could create all kinds of customers ations, and we're going to look at all these different settings in a minute. He couldn't save squad, he could not save it in any way you're on ly choice. If you ever want to read it is those settings for your custom contact sheet or a custom web gallery was to make sure you never change them because they'd stay changed until you change them to something else, but there was no way to save. Templates. But thankfully, in c s five, we got the ability to save templates and that's this little tiny piece of paper right here, someone she get all these settings perfect and there's a slew of them. Then you could click this little button right here. You could give the template a name, and then you can access it from that point on in this mini right here. Okay, so the fact that there's not a whole lot it's really no big deal, you can create your own templates and will be better than using lee. So let's, take a look at what all you can do in here. Let's start with a template and let's say will create a for my five contact sheet. Now you'll notice that nothing changed over here in the pre v area at all. You have to keep clicking this refresh preview button every time you make a change to see it. So once I clicked, create refresh previ. Now in the in the output preview, I'm seeing exactly what my contact sheet will look like. So as I go through these templates to see which one you want to start with, you have to keep clicking that button, so don't let that throw you think that you know nothing is happening, you have to keep clicking that button. So you can see some of the different ones that we've got a trip tickets just gonna split the image or the three pictures you know try three ok so let's go back to our contact she here in refresh their go so now let's find team let's say that I want larger thumbnail because those aren't really very large so let's come down here and see what all we can do on the right hand side so each one of these little sections in the output pale can't be collapsed or expanded right now they're expanded but you can click the little flippy triangle to their left and flippy triangle is an unofficial official o'reilly sanctioned phrase for the missing manual book series I'm not joking david pogue is the one who invented it flippy triangle it's pretty descriptive I like it's like what is that it's a flippy triangle so if you're not seeing these settings under a heading just click that will triangle and it'll drop it down like a window shade okay so we can choose what kind of paper we want to print this on you know we'll just go with us paper here again nothing changed in the preview click the refresh preview button now we can sit what kind of quality we want by default straight from the factory bridge is goingto make sure that these little faux nails are three hundred pixels per inch but she can set that toe a few other things in here, okay? And if you want to use maximum pixels per inch, go ahead and choose full, but I find three hundred works best for most everything that I've ever done. You can also choose what quality level these little thumbnails air being generated at by default it's set at seventy, which is a pretty decent quality, I think, in my opinion, good enough for somebody say, hey, I like that picture, I don't like that picture or this picture will work better in my layout in that picture, so you can set that here you can also control what background color you've got going on right now, said to why that's probably a good choice to leave it as if you don't want to go broke buying inc for your printer, if you choose any other color than the printer is gonna have to spray ink all over that paper don't think you want to be doing that, but you can, so we could just take a look at that refresh. The preview looks pretty but lots of ink, so we'll change that backto white. But if you were doing, I'm trying to think of where that would be useful if you were using this functionality as a way to design a pdf, you know, so what printed out would really be something useful or artistic than maybe changing those background colors have made more sense but for purposes of creating a comp of a slew of different images it doesn't really make sense to change that background color and you're not stuck with just the background colors that are in that poppet menu because you've got a little color swatch right here where to open the color picker next setting down it's still in the document section is a password so if you're sending this pdf to a client it's a sensitive situation I don't even know what that would be you can lock this pdf down with password so that only people who know the magic password I'm thinking porn in the street theo only they they came to mind you could put a password on it so that you know that person couldn't just distribute this pdf everywhere to have it around the world have access to it so you can also when she put a password on it you can keep people from printing it a situation were and that would be useful is if for whatever reason you're generating pretty high quality larger thumbnails than you would not want somebody just to be ableto you know put that thing so you could turn that on now we're down here to the layout section and this is where you can really find team the look of this pdf so under image placement that controls how many rows and columns you have ok so what we're telling bridge right here say ok those those images that I have active I want you to take them and I want you to start on the first row print them across first and then go down by columns so you khun change that any way you want say if we wanted to use to go down instead of side to side you can determine how many columns you've got if I want these some nails to be larger I need to reduce the columns that I've got right so I could click within the column field and I could say hey guinea three columns all right then you can put in how many rows but of course nothing changes until you do what click the refresh button now we're seeing our changes take place here so we can tell it how many rows doesn't really make difference in this example because we don't have that many photos we can say how much space you want in between your photos here horizontal vertical her top bottom left right I believes a space horizontal let's see if this will let us change the size of the fund males it's still space in between ok so it is good to keep refreshing the preview because some of these settings can be just a little bit like what does that really mean what's it going to do so you can keep playing around with him so we can set that back, and I remember what it was, but we'll say point two five and refresh our preview again so you can make all kinds of changes there. You could tell bridge to take care of the spacing all by itself. You can say, hey, would you rotate the photos that they need to so, you know, for the best fit what have you, um, other information that we can choose to have on or not is overlays overlays are new and see a six I believe you can have the file name being overlay. You could have the extension mean or relay and you can turn these things often on to see what they do. Here we go and you can also put page numbers on your contact sheets. So if this pdf is going to go multiple pages that be a nice thing to have, if you know order is is important to you than you could turn on a page number and say placing on the hitter placing on a fitter so will enable a fitter section, and now we've got a little page number down there at the bottom, right? Any kind of text that is going on either is ah, full tax caption or overly situation here, you can control the fun in the color okay, so if you want those families to be larger, you want your client to actually be able to read them. Then you might want to bump that up in size. Yeah, they got bigger and you can change the color of the fun. All that kind of good stuff. Even with the patient overs header. Information is nice. Tohave makes you look very professional. So let's, go ahead and turn on the ad. A header. You can set the position of it. Do you want a left? Right or center? Let's? Go ahead. And she's, left and let's call this. I didn't really take these shots, so but that's. Okay, you can add your name of their the tots. I'd make it a lot bigger. Said it looks like it's got looks like it was designed and meant to be there. Not tacked on as an afterthought. So I typed a wrong distance or something in there. Okay, fine. Hey, he can sit. Did tohave a divider. All right, so bridges squawking at me tell me I don't have room to put all that stuff in there, but you guys get the point so you can add a hitter, and then we've got our patient were down there at the bottom as a fitter. And since we turned our federal on earlier it's already on here in this panel, and I'm just using this little scroll bar on the right hand side just to keep going down through these settings and here again, you can set the position of the fitter and let's say that not only do you want page numbers, but you'd like it to maybe say page so we could tie page space in there and there's still stock squawking at me about measurements. So anyway, the next panel down is playback, and this was kind of neat. If you want to create a slide show that's male, herbal, email, herbal, then you can turn this on, and your pdf will actually play as a sideshow and the recipients on the recipient's computer so that's pretty cool. So if you want to do that, you could turn on the open and full screen mode that when they open this pds save e mailed it to them, it automatically takes over their screen and goes through all the different photos. Here you can set it to automatically advance to the next page. You can't control how long each of the particular images are on screen, and you can set it to play again after it ends by turning on the loop. Checkbox and you can even control the transitions between those images just like in a real slide show but this one is going to be saved out as a pdf which can be kind of handy watermark lets you add a really watermark on top of the photo so if you're printing these out at a rather large size okay then you can turn on the water mark feature and bridge will actually put a watermark on top of each photo which is really nice I thinks the water marks that were new and c s six not the the other overlays so let's come back up here and I'm going to choose a different template there we go so you get a larger photo so now we can turn on at watermark and we can tell it what kind of text we want ads we can say he's a snyder we're here for topically studio whatever your copyright information is and of course she can set the font I'm gonna try to make this a little bit bigger safe you'll let me so see how it put it right on top of the photo so that's the difference between an overly which I wish it said caption because that seems much more like a caption to me than an overlay watermark is an overlay so but anything you put down here in the watermark panel is going to show up on top of your image so if I were you I wouldn't do a black overlay that kind of takes away from the photo I might do white or I might click this little swatch and I think the best water marks are kind of a light gray alright still there you know doesn't take away from your image quite so much that still accomplished is your goal which is messing up the image to the point where nobody's gonna want to print it or steal it so let me click refresh preview in my own humble opinion that's a little bit better of a water martha and black and you can also if you have a custom watermark let's say maybe your photography studio's logo and you've created that as an image file you can access that right here in bridge is going to stick that on each and every photo but again unless you're printing your photos larger I wouldn't bother water marking it because nobody is in the care about postage stamps anyway let me what are they gonna do with him so you can insert your own image and you just use the path field here well cryptically name to tell bridge where that image lives and you khun set exactly how large you wanted to be the opacity want that image teo teo be printed on top of your thumbnails here and if you want to rotate the logo a little bit you can do that to you so those are some of the settings that we have here uh with pds let's go back to something that is like a contact sheet here we go and let's say we're all happy with it and everything we can choose to view the pdf after we save which is going toe on the map is going to open a preview the application preview and then the pdf is going to be there seeing see it full side or you don't even have to do that you can leave that checkbox often just click save actually let's view the pdf after we save it and then bridges asking where do we want to say this so we can say this you know as it on your desktop pop it over here and let's say fall contact sheet click save so there's our contact sheet so that could be handy close that close that now let's say that I've done all kinds of things to this template we'll add a header again and we'll say whatever your photography studio is I've been up a little if it'll lettuce there we go and keep scrolling back up don't forget about this crowbar because if if on your screen you're not seeing all these panels you just need to scroll for them in this bridge cs six interface change with the new color change that scroll bar is kind of hard to see so don't let that three all right so now we wanted to say this template all we do is come up here before we close it doesn't matter if you save the pdf viewed it what have you seen as you get your settings right? You can click this little button right here and bridge is going to give you the world's smallest dialogue and we can call it a client proof and create and forever more that template is now going to show up in this pop up menu so that could be really handy and if you come across a time when you say and I'm just not using that that templates really awful then you could just click it to activate it and then you could get rid of it by clicking that tiny tiny little trash can I got at the right so any questions on pds your contact sheets yes indeed gravity and studio all good okay, so we had a number of questions about passwords on about protecting that um people were suggesting by the way that legal documents might need passwords as well as the example that you gave but best shot is wondering can you password protect normal folders in bridge that air not pdf ce I don't think she'll I'm not try that there is a lock command and bridge but I'm having not tested it I'm not real sure what exactly it locks down but you could experiment with that as faras legal documents I'm trying to think of if you would use bridge for that, I guess if you had bridge could combine multiple pdf, so if let's say you've got a couple of different documents you need tio, you know, combined into a single pdf, you could kind of do that here with this, um, output module as well, but I guess it would be conceivable to send photos around as part of a legal situation, all right? And I'm not sure if that answers this question as well. From from violet fan violet fan with a p h p and yeah, uh, can you save pdf with password in photoshopped or in design? You can create a contact she in photo shop, but sam was going to use that one that one that one, and I'll scroll and pick a few more images we'll call that done so the contact sheet or pdf functionality of photoshopped lose in the file menu automate contact sheet too it's kind of the same interface, but it doesn't have as much functionality and I can't see past the bottom my screen here, I think that is the bottom of the dialog box and I don't see any password protection on their at all, so it looks like the output module in bridge has a bit more functionality options security then what you can create in photo shop and again you're not going to see this contact she in cs four or see us five foot a shop okay it was in cf street earlier got ripped out came back and see a six so if you want to do packs were joining to do the pdf sandbridge okay more about the context she digital echo is from ohio was wondering if you could do landscape orientation contact chief seems like you should be able tio I haven't tried to do that you could play around with the in the document section here that would take a little bit of experimentation oh, here it is right here you've got an orientation button get give the clip again you're not gonna see change right that really threw me when I first started using bridge it's like are you doing anything so you have to remember to keep clicking that refresh a preview been and I think this is also relating to these question from up stop how do you add pictures from different folders? Howdy add pictures from different folders. Well while you're here creating this one I'm not sure that you can if you come back over here to preview that's what that's showing you pretty this preview window is showing you a larger view of the content that you started the project with okay, so to add more images to this project let's see if we can so you'd use your panel over here on the left hand side to navigate back to where those live so we'll come over here in the stock art folder and now I'm back to my entire stock art folder so I don't think you can add more images to that current pdf then you started out with so it's really it's not that hard to start over because nothing over here changes you know you just lost your your previous so then you come back over here and you know do as many as you want and then click the refresh preview great we've got a question here in the audience uh regarding the playback option is there is there a way to actually see what the playback would look like without actually saving at first or do you have to save it on dh then you have the ability to see the playback yeah that's a good question when you're using these playback options down here if you want to create an email a bill slideshow you will have tio save it before you're actually going to see exactly what that's going to look like gotcha so if you didn't like the duration like five seconds or something like that it was on auto advance you need to kind of start over yeah I believe so we can we can try that I don't think it's going to show it here in this um preview you're gonna have to actually save it and then open it to see what it's gonna look like doctor thank you it is a little bit clunky all of these different options and it's a little clunky for the web web gallery to which we're goingto work on hearing a little bit but it really does seem to improve a little bit in each version so and remember this output module is is needed only came along and see us for so they seem that only seems to add a little bit more functionality to it in each in each version but but it is kind of handy there it's as you can see it's a little bit weird and there is limitations toe what you khun dio but it's handy okay we have let's see maybe one more on walton is there any way to put a drop shadow or other special effects make contact sheets a little cooler I don't think so I don't think you can add a drop shot I mean all you can do is what you see over here in this um panel on the right hand side there's just not a whole lot that you can do unfortunately and I don't see drop shadows as an option mainly just you know header fitter how many rows how many columns do you want? A caption do you not want a caption which is this file name and do you want overlays that's pretty much it ok it's not the sexiest thing in the world I have this thought as well and I'm going to read it because l a photog uh suggested as well but with regard to the question about if you could add images from different folders and his suggestion was you could make a collection perhaps and then make a contact chief from that collection you could do it that way yeah or you could just start out with more files active than you know then you might need in that project and then you can least I think you can yeah click to add them down here in the content panel the big thing is that they have to be showing up in here in the content panel which means you have to have activated them before you started the project and then you can you know add more so I can come over here and say refresh preview I don't think it did it though it should have done it but I'm not sure that it did not seeing that other image so began a little clunky it's a feature not a bug ugo all right well I think we're going to move on so excellent okay, so the next thing we're going to talk about is importing photos and then we're going to get into raiding them so I have a memory card plugged in where you can't see it and threw card reader so we're going to use bridge to import our photos. The first thing I would do is get out of this output module. So I'm just gonna click back on the essentials. Button and bridge is going to take a second it's going. Take me out of that work space and back into what we've been using all day.