3.2. Customizing Workspaces One of the very best characteristics of Bridge, and one that you will certainly want to make use of, is the ability to create and use panel layouts that allow you to see and sort your images in virtually any way imaginable. This section shows you all the choices for automatic layouts (see Figures 3-2 through 3-6). You can instantly switch to any of these by either making a menu choice or by clicking an icon. The captions for each of these layouts will tell you how to access them.
Compact Mode It is a little known secret that you can have as many Bridge windows open at a time as you like. If you put them all into Compact Mode (Figure 3-2), you can browse and open files from several different folders. You can toggle Compact Mode instantly from any Bridge layout by clicking its icon, by choosing it from the View menu, or by pressing Cmd/Ctrl-Enter. Figure 3-2. Bridge in Compact Mode.
Slide Show Some prefer this view (Figure 3-3) for ranking images. I find it ideal as a means to show clients a slideshow, rather than making a PDF slideshow. It's faster and I can easily switch to another view if the discussion leads to wanting to add keywords, a label, or some "sticky" notes to the image itself by opening it in Photoshop. Figure 3-3. Bridge in Slide Show mode.
Filmstrip view This view (Figure 3-4) allows you to see a selected image with a very large preview window, while the rest of the images in the folder are in a "strip" either across the bottom or down the righthand side. Ordinarily, you'd see the panels on the left, but I like to remove them by dragging the divider bar all the way to the left. This is an ideal view for ranking and labeling images. You might want to save this view without the panels as a custom view. If so, choose Window Save Workspace and enter the name you like into the Save Workspace dialog. Clicking the left and right arrows change the images one at a time. Clicking the dotted circle icon moves the filmstrip to different positions on the screen. Figure 3-4. Bridge in Filmstrip view.
Details view This can be a great switch to make if you quickly want to find some information about how the picture was taken. You can see elements such as whether the image has been adjusted in Camera Raw, when the file was created and last modified, the image's title, and more. (See Figure 3-5.) Figure 3-5. Bridge in Details view.
Versions and Alternates Using Versions and Alternates requires using the entire suite, so we're not covering it in this book. However, if you do own the entire suite, you should know that Versions and Alternates allows you to reference the various versions of a file so that you can keep track of them and the order in which they were done.
Customize your own view Figure 3-6 shows my own customized and preferred view. Simply drag the bar that divides the Lightbox from the Panels until it divides the screen roughly in half. This will give you the largest possible preview window, displaying either vertical or horizontal images. Drag all the panel tabs into one window. Figure 3-6. Bridge customized view. This is the view that I customized for myself and the one that I highly recommend. NOTE But wait, there's more: Bridge allows you to automate certain types of processing, such as creating web galleries, contact sheets, slide shows, making multiple prints on a single sheet of paper, and image conversion. You can also merge multiple images into either an HDR or a panorama, but I'll cover those operations in later chapters. |
