Lessons

Lesson Info

Introduction

So let's dive into bridge, shall we? So we're going to spend the whole day talking about using an application that has been installed with the creative suite aps for years and years and years and until the last couple of versions it even came with the mac version of photoshopped elements believe it or not. So as digital images accumulate on your hard drive, the ability to find the files that you need fast gets harder in harder in harder, so why not take advantage of something that is probably already on your machine? One of the great things about bridges that its special purpose is to let you browse, organized, compare sort rate review, manage and even import your images okay, you don't even have to import your images with bridge to see them. You can think of bridge kind of like the finder windows and the mac os or when those explore on a pc, and we're going to look at the difference between using the finder or when those explorer and using bridge and I think by the end of the day you'...

re going to be a huge bridge convert. The biggest thing to remember about bridge is that you can use it to see any and all files on your computer again you don't have to use it to import the files tio see them with it and it displays all kinds of wonderful previews okay, so just like you'd walk into a designer store, right, they're not just gonna have one designer most likely of let's say shirts, you're gonna have a wide selection, so just like that bridge can see any and all files on your computer, for example, in the finder and we're going to look at this here in a minute and the finder or on windows explorer. You can't see previews of a lot of different file formats, such as e, p s or even adobe illustrator files, and arguably when you're hunting around for the right file for a project or the foul that you want to open to continue working on a project, it can be hard to find them. If you can't see a preview of the file and you have a lot of similarly named files and things get get kind of tough real quick here also bridge can show you multiple pages of pdf ce pretty cool without opening them. Yeah, you can even see movies. She could play a movie right in bridge without opening it. You can preview an audio file it's just really amazing speaking a pdf she can also see indesign files because he previews of in his own files and you can also see multiple pages if you know the right preference has set up in in design and we'll talk about that later as well. Unfortunately, one of the only things you're not going to see in bridges your eye photo library fianna mad because the mac os kind of squirrels it away from me because it doesn't want you touching it also, you're not going to see cork express files and that's not cork's fault I have teo I have to say here think orc files have a preview embedded in them, but unfortunately I don't be software just doesn't seem to display it. I can't imagine why, but it really is useful, so and again, anything you do in bridge happens in the finder, on the mac or in windows explore okay, so it really is as you're going to learn today most often times an easier place to handle final management tasks like copying files and moving files to and froing even deleting files. Um, renaming files is also a better place to do it here. So it's it's a neat way tio manage and organize everything on your hard drive really? So here the big pros of using bridge and we're going to take a look at how to do all of this over the course of the day so like I said earlier, it's often times easier to find your files faster enbridge more file previews, including movies and audio files you can see inside multi page pdf so which is a really neat thing and we're also going to look at a loop tool that's like a tiny little magnifying glass and bridge where let's say you needed to find out what some of the text says in a pdf for example, you don't even have to open the door in thing and it's usable magnifying glass there, enbridge tio, find out what you need, there's also some advanced file search features and bridge that we're going to look at. You can even save searches in bridge, so if you need to keep going back to the same type of searches periodically, you can move copy, renamed files and bridge. You can even rename a slew of files at once call battery naming so in other words, if you're not given the photos, meaningful names when you're importing them from your camera and you're just letting them roll is dnd underscore five one nine or nine or two niner I mean that's not very helpful, so even if you don't rename them on the import process, you could do it here in bridge really, really fast, we can add and manage key words here in bridge and when I think of key words I usedto onley think of keywords in regards to photography but if you're a designer adding keywords to files client name keywords, client project keywords is a phenomenal way teo not really have tio duplicate a bunch of files on your hard drive to maintain some wild folder structure if you get into the habit of key word in your files, you confined everything you've done for a single client like that enbridge so we're going to take a look at how to put that into play you can't even manage your meta data and again meta data isn't just for photography meta data one of the things that's captured in meta data on photos is you know, did your flash fire what kind of s o did you have? What was your aperture set at and so on and so forth? But for designers meta data includes fines, color swatches all kinds of things like that so we can even search files in bridge for specific funds and colors really great stuff um we can use it to import images bridge is a great way has a nice big photo downloading application where you see nice big previews and you can choose which photos toe import which ones not to import if you've got an external hard drive plugged into your computer and you probably do while you're importing pictures, then you can make bridge make a copy of all your pictures on import you can review and rate your images. Bridge has an amazing full size preview that we're going to look at that's, just gorgeous and it's a great way to see your photos full screen when you're importing them very quickly using keyboard shortcuts, give them star ratings, decide to reject a few if you've got some better out of focus and so on and so forth. Instant splotches are a snap in bridge if you have somebody dropped by your house and you just gotten back from vacation than if you raided your photos, you could like in two seconds. Enbridge you could filter it down to show you the cream of the crop pictures from your vacation, and with one keyboard shortcut, you could start a full screen slide show and it's just beautiful. You can also group images into stacks in bridge, so if you're shooting in burst mode on your camera like I like, I often d because I often don't shoot with a tripod and I'm a little naughty about that. I'm just too lazy to carry everything with me, but if getting in burst mode, that means that your cameras firing off, you know, over three shots every time you press the shutter. And that middle shot is going to be sharper, because, you know, when you depress the shutter once you could introduce a little cameras, take if you're not on the tripod, and then when you release the shutter and you can reduce a little camera shake, so those middle shots are going to be sharper than the other ones, so if you've got a slew of shots like that from birth, smoother than bridge will group them into a stack so you don't have to scroll through twenty of very similar shot sheikhoun group them a stature that makes your bridge being experience a little cleaner, so we'll take a look at how to do that t you can also copy and paste your editor straight from camera raw and bridge without opening camera. Also, if you've edited a photo in raw and you're looking at it's preview in bridge and you wantto apply the same adjustments to another photo is say, that was shot under the same lighting conditions. It's just a it's, a shortcut, many situation you don't have to go back into bridge and it's really incredible. You can also create contact sheets and the contact sheets just fancy way of saying, hanging up several images on a single page or creating much more custom pdf ce inversions, gosh back is ceos three in earlier we used to be able do all that in photo shop straight in photo shop, and then it will be ripped it out in c s foreign cs five in the community screamed so loudly and they offloaded it. Two bridges what they did, but the community screamed and now it's back in cia six but you can still create a beautiful pdf ce and bridge, and you can save your template. So if you create a look for your pds that you really love, you don't have to customize it every single time you can save it is a as a style you can use again later, same thing on web galleries bridge is an amazing place to upload web galleries, and it'll even handle that up loading process as well. So if you've got information for your server, you know where your website is hosted, then you can dial all that into bridge set up a custom web gallery, so you import your photos in bridge and then you'd bought a being better boom with the web gallery and upload, and you're done it's just incredibly fast. So those are some of the things that we're going to be learning today, so we're gonna have a lot of fun with all of that so here's what the bridge window looks like and just to give you an idea of what some of the controls do the top set of tools at the very top of the work space are for navigation, so you can use those to cruise around through your file structure. You've got a search bar at the top right and there's several different kinds of searches you can do in bridge, and we're going to cover all of those in the course of the day that little compact mood button at the top right, we'll let you shrink down the bridge, work space into a teeny tiny little work space so you can scoot it out of your way. On the left hand side, you can see your entire folder structure, which is really need for navigating your hard drive and also underneath that topper of tools or something that's called a path bar, and you can think of that as a trail of bread crumbs, like most websites have kind of let you know where you are exactly within your hard drive, so we're going to be using that and there's also some fun secrets with the path bar that we'll talk about down there toward the bottom left. We've got a filter panel, the collections panel in an export panel, the filter panel let's you fine tune what you're seeing, so we get into applying keywords and star ratings and all that we can tell a bridge too on ly show us certain things using that panel collections that's where we're going to handle our saved searches that's gonna be a lot of fun export bridge will also let you export slew of rob raw files as j pegs, which is handy if you're start photographer, that export panel will also be handy for exporting highest quality j pegs from those raw files, and you can set it up so that the settings are appropriate for submitting to stop photography side so that's kind of handy as well in the center of the bridge window. That's what we're going to see all of our fabulous thumb, no previews, yeah, on thumbnail previous, and we'll talk a little bit more about this. Once we get going and bridge, these previews have to be drawn by bridge, so when you first start using, the program is going to take a bridge a little bit to draw all those previews and that's called creating its image cash a c a c h e so that you can see all of those wonderful previews there in the center. And then you've got a nice from neil slider down at the bottom that lets you control how big those some nails are, and you've got a lot of leeway. With the way that you're seeing all this information and bridge, you got another little preview of their the top right, and then underneath that one that will pay off, you've got your meta data in your key words. Now, this is called the essentials workspace, so this is the default workspace that you're going to see straight from the factory. When you open that bridge, I really like it, but you can rearrange all of this stuff completely up there towards the top. Adobe has preset work spaces that you might find useful, but you can also create your own. So all of these panels khun b resize, you can make him smaller. You can make a bigger, you can rearrange them, you, khun, greet them together. You can liberate them from their current groups, and so on and so forth. So this is just a a little idea of what's going on in the interface here.