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Term: Adobe Bridge
Description: Adobe Bridge is a powerful asset management system created by Adobe to help users manage and access all types of digital media in their creative workflow. It provides users with cutting-edge tools for finding and managing large numbers of files; plus, customizing workspaces and viewing data-rich metada about their media. Its features give users the flexibility to search for files by name, expansive tagging capabilities, customizable color labels, built-in image editing capabilities such as resizing, as well as an array of other options that enhance the user-experience while handling digital content. Using Adobe Bridge helps streamline workflows allowing users to easily find, organize, edit and share their digital media.
Adobe Bridge
What is Adobe Bridge?
Adobe Bridge, at its core, is a complex and powerful media manager for visual people. Like a focus ring, it allows you to defocus what’s not wanted, and see clearly all your media assets on your hard drive or network without needing to catalogue or database it all. But it’s also so much to it, and so much more. For a lot of Adobe users, and until about a year ago for even myself, Adobe Bridge was largely neglected. With Photohop’s pixel-bending capability, and Lightroom’s easy organizational structure and even simpler editing structure with a Camera Raw engine, Bridge seemed to fit into the picture Meg sits in Family Guy - seemingly adopted. But the step-child of a program has come of age in recent incarnations, and can be an indispensable tool.
Top Adobe Bridge Tips
For those of you who use Adobe Bridge, (even if you also use Adobe Lightroom for some of your work) here are our top five tips for maximizing your workflow in Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw! Many of these tips may also be applicable to previous versions of Adobe Bridge, for those of you who have CS5 or CS4. The main difference between Adobe Bridge CS6 and all previous versions is, of course, the new process version that has completely revolutionized RAW (non-destructive) processing techniques. While this makes Adobe Bridge CS6 (and Adobe Lightroom) extremely powerful, it does mean that things like presets are NOT compatible between the programs. (The SLR Lounge Preset System, for example, is created for Adobe Bridge CS6 and Lightroom 4 ONLY, because it relies on the 2012 Process Version to function) If you process high volumes of RAW photos, we highly recommend a Bridge or Lightroom workflow that is maximized for speed. Both of these programs use what is called "non-destructive editing", and allow you to batch edit large volumes of images at once. While many photographers use Lightroom as their primary workflow tool, Adobe Bridge CS6 is extremely useful for many different reasons, and here at SLR Lounge we use both programs side by side!The Video
1.) Open ACR Without Photoshop
The first thing you want to do is configure Bridge so that it can use the Adobe Camera Raw interface without needing to also open Photoshop. To do this, go into your Adobe Bridge Preferences and look in the General tab, as below:
2.) Edit JPG & TIF Images Alongside RAW Images
Another very handy option is for those of you who ever have to deal with editing JPG and TIF images. As advanced as RAW image processing has gotten over the years, many people still color correct their JPG, TIF, and PSD images the old-fashioned way- in Photoshop! In addition to being restrictive and time consuming, this is a "destructive" editing method, as opposed to RAW processing which uses non-destructive editing. There are many options for editing JPG and TIF images, but for example if you only need to edit one or two JPG images here and there, it would be incredibly annoying to have to create a Lightroom Catalog every time you need to process a random JPG or TIF photo. So in Adobe Bridge, go into your Camera Raw Preferences (which are separate from your General Bridge Preferences) and set the options for JPEG and TIFF Handling to "Automatically open all supported...".
3.) Enable Automatic 100% Previews for Rapid Browsing and Culling
One of the awesome things about a RAW, catalog-based workflow is the incredible speed with which you can browse, cull, and process your images. Indeed, just like how Lightroom has "render standard/1:1 previews" in it's Library options, Adobe Bridge also has 100% previews and high-quality thumbnails!
4.) View Images From Multiple SubFolders At Once
Here is one trick that many Bridge users don't know about, and that is the "Show Items From Subfolders" option. To enable this option for a folder, click on "View" in the main menu and then click "Show Items From Subfolders".
5.) Use "Select All" in Camera Raw, Then De-Select While Editing
This last one is a little difficult to grasp at first, but the best way to explain it is that you simply want to avoid performing the same adjustments twice. If you're working on a high volume of photos that were shot in similar lighting conditions, then most of your editing can be done in batches.
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