Section 11. Accessing Bridge

#11. Accessing Bridge

Adobe designed Bridge to be the nucleus to all of the shared settings, services, and documents you work with within the suite. Although Bridge has a supporting role in the suite, you'll soon consider it indispensable as you start working with it.

Automatically Launch Bridge with Photoshop

If you want Bridge to open whenever Photoshop is launched, go to Photoshop's Preferences and select the Automatically Launch Bridge option in the General preference set.

Returning from Bridge

Learning the keyboard shortcut for Browse not only makes it faster to jump to Bridge, but it also helps when you want to return to the application you used to open it. Bridge uses the same default keyboard shortcut of Command+Option+O (Mac) or Control+Alt+O (Windows) for its command for File > Return to {application name}, making it easy to switch between Bridge and the application you're currently working in.

So how do you open Bridge? Several options are available to you:

• Launch the application: Since Bridge is a stand-alone application, you can launch it just as you would any other application. Add it to the Dock (Mac) or Start menu (Windows) to make it more convenient to access.

• Click the Bridge button: The Bridge button is located at the right end of the Options palette in Photoshop, the Control palette in Illustrator and InDesign, and the Main toolbar in GoLive. Make sure you can see the Adobe Services toolbar in GoLive by choosing Window > Toolbars > Adobe Services Toolbar, which by default is docked to the main toolbar.

• Use the Browse command: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and GoLive also include the menu command File > Browse to launch Bridge (Figure 11). The default keyboard shortcut for Browse is Command+Option+O (Mac) or Control+Alt+O (Windows). To remember this shortcut, just think of the common keyboard shortcut for opening files and add Option/Alt to the mix.

  Figure 11. Adobe has added the Browse command to almost all File menus in CS2, making Bridge as accessible as opening files.