Using Adobe Bridge CS4 to organize Photos

The first thing I have to mention is that CS4 is a collection of software that includes many programs including Photoshop, Illustrator, and Bridge. (to name a few) There are also larger collections you can purchase that includes Premier and After Effects as well as Dreamweaver, Flash etc. I don’t know all off hand but the Adobe website is very comprehensive and easy to navigate.

I’d also like to remind everyone that software piracy is ILLEGAL! I do not condone it whatsoever. That being said, I would like to talk about Bridge and how awesome it is. It has MANY advantages and uses, but I’m going to talk about using it for organization of media and batch functionality it possesses. I will be including helpful pictures.

So let’s set up the scene. You have a whole pile of images you have just been uploading to your computer but have neglected to organize. It’s a daunting task, so just keep just piling up and up. OR You’ve photographed your first Wedding and you have something close to 600 images to sort through before delivery. (post wedding workflow) The second example is very important for saving time, I have used Bridge numerous times to cut down on the time I’m physically working on post production because you can set a batch action to all your photos and walk away while it does it’s thing.

I’m going to start with opening up the program as if it was my first time. I reset the default workspace for this task, and re-organized to show you how to personalize your own workspace.

So this is what Bridge initially looks like when you open it. On the left, you have your folders, favorites, filters and collections. The centre is your content; this changes when you double click on icons or folders. On the right, there is your preview, metadata and keywords. For me, this workspace doesn’t work, so I change and resize the sections to suit my needs.

From either the favorites, or folders sidebar you can select the location of your files or folders that will be displayed in the content window. Within the content section you can double click folders to open subfolders and eventually you’ll see your images in this section.

Here you can see how I’ve dragged the sections around to make the content section smaller and the preview section the largest. The reason I do this is to see the pictures more clearly. This is important to me for weeding out the groups shot in weddings that have blinkers or people not looking etc. If you didn’t need to do this, then you might want the content section larger so that you could have an ‘at a glance’ look at all your files. I also minimize the metadata section as much as possible because the information is not that important for my needs, but it can be for others.

There is a slider in the bottom right that you can use for the thumbnails in the content section. Depending on how many you want view at a time combined with how wide you’ve adjusted the section to be, will determine what size you want to show. I usually like to have them in 2 columns of 2 rows with the size about what’s shown above, meaning I have to have my preview section a little narrower.

You can also view as a filmstrip with the thumbnails at the bottom. You can toggle between ‘filmstrip’ and ‘essentials’ (the previous view), you can also select custom workspaces under the ‘me’ pulldown menu. I prefer the ‘essential’ layout but it’s really up to personal preference.

Then under tools is Batch Rename, where you will have the option to rename in the same folder, move to another or new folder, or copy to another or new folder. To do the latter 2 options, you first have to select the destination folder, and if applicable-create a new folder. After selecting your destination folder, you have to choose what you want included in the filename. I always include a text field first, which can be a combination of letters and numbers and underscores, then I always include a sequenced number field which I make 3-digits long and start at ‘001′. If you are moving images from a number of folders into one new one, you would want to make note of the last number you sequenced. Bridge usually retains this info if you haven’t done any other renaming in between. You can keep adding fields to include in your filename, but don’t over complicate it. Don’t forget to make your images cross-platform compatible, meaning if you’re on Mac, select the ‘windows’ check box, or vice versa. This way if you’re sharing your images with family or a client, they can access them on their computer without any compatibility issues.

Filters are established a number of ways. If you apply ratings, labels or keywords, you can use this sidebar to only view your selections. For example, if I want to see only pictures that have a landscape orientation, I can select it in filters and then the only images I see in the content panel are the landscape ones. The portraits are not lost, only hidden. I find this helpful for batch actions which I will cover shortly. There are a variety of reasons for using filters and you’ll soon come to realize these for yourself, the more you experiment in Bridge.

Ratings and Labels are great for weeding out the good from the mediocre from the bad. I usually have the images sorted by date created and go through one by one and rate each photo. Blurry shots are automatically given 1 star and the great ones are given 5 stars and then the ones in between are 3 stars and the ones I can’t decide on are 4 stars. There are key board shortcuts for the stars, which I highly recommend using as ‘right-clicking’ can be super time consuming. Shortcuts are cmd(or ctrl) -1,2,3,4,5 (obviously for how many stars you want). So what I do is, using my ‘->’ arrow key, I go from the top to the bottom assigning ratings. Once I have rated all the images in a folder, I delete everything under a 2 star and then revisit the 4’s and 3’s. Anything 3 or under is deleted and only the 4’s and 5’s are given to the Bride & Groom for Print Selection. If you are opposed to deleting, you can always just move the unwanted images to a new folder entitled ‘NG’ or something to that effect. Labels are similar only they add a colour band under the photo that have meanings. These are handy when more than one person has to attend to the images.

When you right-click on an image, you have a number o options presented to you. To edit the image, you can select from a few different programs, but if you double click, the default is Photoshop. There are also many options you may have seen in word processing programs, or just through file management on your computer like ‘cut’, ‘copy’ and ‘paste’. Further tot hat, you can move/copy to a desired folder/destination. Batch rename is also available by right clicking, as well as label options, sorting and creating new folders. Also from here is where you can edit ‘RAW’ files in the Camera Raw program that comes with Photoshop. If you have shot your images in Raw format, here is where you can adjust exposure and white balance and other fine-tweaking. If you double click RAW file, you will automatically be taken to the Camera Raw software first.

In Camera Raw, you can adjust your White Balance to achieve the right temperature. If your image looks too blue, for example, this is a white balance issue. You can also fix the exposure by selecting ‘auto’ above the exposure slider. Sometimes this doesn’t give you the best exposure, in which case you can play around with the sliders, but don’t worry if you mess up, because you can select ‘default’ to go back to the original image. This also isn’t even permanent once you select ‘done’ because you can revisit the Raw file anytime from Bridge. If you want to make further adjustments, there are tools above the image for ‘red-eye removal’ and cropping etc. It’s a basic edit palette similar to Photoshop, but you can also ‘Open Image’ to go directly to Photoshop to make you adjustments there, but from Photoshop you will have to save new files. Also note, that you can select multiple RAW images and open them in C.R and ’select all’ so that you can make batch adjustments to white balance and exposure. I would recommend only doing this for images that have the same exposure etc. If your RAW files are good and don’t need any adjustments, then the only reason to open them in Camera Raw would be to further open them in Photoshop by selecting ‘open image’. Again, if you double-click a RAW file, you will automatically be taken to Camera Raw before going to Photoshop. If your RAW files don’t need adjusting, then you can do a batch ‘Image Processor’ to save them all as jpegs or other compressed files. If you don’t compress your files, you won’t be able to open them anywhere besides Bridge. (or other software designed for viewing RAW files)

Image Processor (tools->photoshop->image processor)is great for selecting all your RAW files and saving them as jpegs. ‘Open first image…’ is just so that if you have RAW files, it opens one image in Camera Raw first so that you can select the ‘Open Image’ button and the the rest of the files follow the same action. If you want to save them somewhere else than you’ll have to select the folder, but don’t worry…you can select ’save in same location’ and it will create a ‘jpeg’ folder within your original folder, so you don’t end up with multiple file types with the same filename. You then select the type -usually jpeg, and if applicable, you can resize to fit-you would use this if you need the images to fit on a website or something where the pixel size was important. If you don’t need to resize, then un-check this option. You can also include copyright info that will be included in the metadata of you file, for example, you wedding photo company’s name. You can run an action from here as well, but there is another section for doing Batch Actions so I will cover it there. I always include the ‘ICC profile’, I’m not sure why, but I’m guessing it’s also part of the metadata. Once you hit ‘run’, if you’ve got a few (like hundreds) files to process, this would be a good time to find something else to do, as this can take quite some time.

For doing batch actions, you will have to got to Tools->Photoshop->Batch. The most popular actions are ‘Black & White’, ‘Sepia Toning’ and ‘Vignetting’. Choose the action, then the source, whether it’s Bridge, a folder or an import. Since you’re selecting this from Bridge (if you have selected your images) you don’t have to change this, but if you have an entire folder to change to Black & White, for example, then choose the folder option and select the folder. You also have to select a destination folder, I usually just make a subfolder in the folder I’m pulling from named with the Action I’m performing, like ‘Black & White’. Ignore the ‘Override Save As…’ if there are not ’save’ or ’save as’ functions in your action. If you are choosing from the default actions, no need to select this. Then you can add to the filename…usually by adding sequence letters or numbers, if you’re saving to a sub-folder, this isn’t really necessary. Make sure the compatibility is selected and then hit ‘OK’. Then just like image processing, you can go find something else to do as this can take a long time depending on how many images, and the speed of your computer.

Here is an example of Vignetting. It is also a Black & White example minus the flowers-this effect was done in Photoshop. To learn how to do this contact me and I’ll make a post about it.

Keywords are helpful if you’re a stock photographer, but there are probably other uses, but I can’t think of any more. Metadata is what is embedded in your image file information. Just from this one image, I can see that it was shot using an aperture of 22 (f-stop) with a shutter speed of 1/200 of a second, and the ISO (film speed) was 800. I can also see the file size, dimensions and colour profile. I don’t really have a use for this info except for the camera settings, that’s why I minimize this panel to only show the top section.

There are many more features available on Bridge. Web Galleries and PDF creation are some examples, but the full scope of Bridge is something I have yet to discover, so as I learn more, I will update you. Learning is never-ending, and in my opinion it never should. Have Fun.

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