There’s plenty to shout about with Adobe Lightroom and if you take a lot of images it really is the way to go. For some, especially those that’ve been using Photoshop for some time, Bridge is the workhorse of their asset management.
Why Bridge?
Lightroom is an amazing Database program with editing and export capabilities that are second to none while Bridge is more of an organiser.
Importing with Lightroom will copy the files to a location and database it. Moving files within Lightroom is easy and Lightroom will alter the database accordingly. Moving a file through another means will make Lightroom ask where it is, after all, its a database not an asset manager.
Bridge is fine with you moving files around any way you like, all it wants to do is show you whats in a chosen location, if something’s moved it won’t care or even know it should’ve been there. For some this is the key difference that moves them to Bridge, its more like they’re used to with their computer’s window based system.
Reviewing Images With Bridge
Navigate to the folder with your images in, this is done using double clicks on folders just as you would in your native operating system. Once you find the files head up to the menu and choose Review Mode, or press Ctrl+B (PC) Cmd+B (Mac)
This will display the images in a carousel type way;
At the bottom right you’ll see there’s three arrows, the first two send the carousel left and right while the downward arrow drops the current image from the carousel. You can also use the left, right, and down arrows on your keyboard.
While in this mode you can give a star rating to images by pressing Ctrl (PC) or Cmd (Mac) and a number from 0 to 5.
Right clicking will also bring up a simple menu where you can add a star rating, colour or open the image;
In the bottom right there’s another set of icons, this time to access the Loupe, and to add the image to a Collection. (In Bridge, collections are a group of images that don’t necessarily have to be in the same location on your hard drive.) Helpfully, this one button will add all the images in the Review mode to a Collection.
I’ll be looking at more features of Bridge in the coming weeks, I’d love to know if you use it and how.
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Filed under: Adobe, Software Tagged: Adobe Bridge, Bridge, Collections, Eric Renno, Lightroom, review 
