Adobe Bridge CS4
Friday, October 24, 2008 6:06Adobe Bridge CS4
Adobe Bridge is an organizational and image-browsing powerhouse that’s been shipping with Photoshop since the inception of the creative suite. However, in previous versions it was sometimes painfully slow and the workspace wasn’t friendly as it could have been. That’s all changed in Photoshop CS4–Bridge got a makeover, a speed boost, and a new Review Mode that’ll make photographers squeal with joy.
Interface lift
When you launch Bridge a friendly, light- gray window containing a slew of resizable and movable panels greets you. Using the familiar Folders panel, you can navigate through your hard drive and view files as scalable thumbnails. To see larger previews, click an image and it’ll appear in the Preview panel (or just press your keyboard’s spacebar for a full-screen preview). At the top of the window lie several new navigational aids including Forward and Back arrow buttons that let you move through recently viewed folders, a “Go to parent or Favorites” menu (it looks like a down arrow) that lets you move up a folder in your directory or access folders you’ve added as Favorites, and the “Go to recent file” menu lets you see all the files and folders you’ve recently viewed. One of the most useful additions is the Path Bar, which serves as a clickable trail of breadcrumbs that keeps you spatially oriented within your file system (if you don’t see it, choose Window: Path Bar).
You can use Bridge to browse all the images on your hard drive; not just the ones you import with it. The new interface design lets you move through your hard drive with ease and gives you easier access to workspaces. After you’ve arranged and resized the panels the way you like them, you can save the workspace so you can return to it later.
Also new is a search bar complete with Spotlight integration. If you don’t know where a file lives, type its name (or the first few letters) into the search field and press Return, and Bridge will instantly launch a search party throughout your hard drive. Workspaces also receive top billing in the new Bridge window, making them a lot easier to find. They’re not new–they were previously stuffed at the bottom right of the window with a cryptic 1, 2, 3 label. If the pre-configured workspaces don’t float your boat, you can always make your own.
Source: networkworld.com
