Photoshop seems to be the de facto application for many cartoonists. I use it extensively as part of my workflow as well. But did you know that Adobe Bridge (bundled with Photoshop) is every bit as useful as Photoshop?
In this article I’ll explain how I use Bridge and why it may be useful to you.
Adobe Bridge at its bare essence, is a very powerful image viewer and organizer. It works across the board among all Adobe apps (hence the name “Bridge”). At a glance you can use Bridge to view a series of images, rename a series of images, add meta tags to further describe an image, rank images, rotate images, or even run automation scripts on a folder’s worth of images.
You can further assign ‘Favorites’, for frequently accessed folders. I have Favorites set up for my comic strips, textures, and other digital artwork. There are four main viewing modes: Essentials, Filmstrip, Metadata, and Output.
Essentials shows thumbnail representations of all the images you have in a particular folder. You can sort your images by Metadata (perhaps maybe to find all the comics you have created on the subject of Twitter *ahem*.
I like the Filmstrip mode as it lets you focus on one image, while having a strip of images underneath that you can cycle through (see screenshot above). Output mode is useful when preparing image files for PDF or generating a Web Gallery. If you select more than one image, they appear side by side. This is great for comparing images to one another.
One of the most powerful features of Bridge is its Image Processor. ( Tools > Photoshop > Image Processor ). You can take a folder of PSD files and batch process them to JPEGs at the click of a button. This is something you could certainly script as a Photoshop Action, but I’m glad it’s built-in to Bridge.
Another useful feature in Bridge is the ability to label your images. You can assign categories like ‘To do’, ‘Approved’, ‘Review’, etc. This is quite useful for work in progress, or when having to pick out specific images from a collection.
I find Bridge to be an indispensable tool. If you haven’t tried it yet, maybe you will too?
Do you use Adobe Bridge? Have a favorite Bridge tip? Share ‘em in the comments below!
-Krishna
I don’t use adobe bridge, but I do use Google Picasa, wich does a very simular job. And indeed it’s a great tool.
I don’t use Bridge. I find it to be little slow and cumbersome. I don’t know, maybe I would like it if I used it more, but I’ve used ACDsee for a long time, which does pretty much the same thing, and I love it. Bridge has a lot of features that are geared more towards professional photographers it seems. It’s become a bit of a running gag among the Halfpixel crew to hate on Bridge when they accidentally open it :)
Google Picassa would work – but does it require a net connection? The only caveat to Bridge is that it requires a beefy processor. It runs like butter for me. :)
Picasa doesnt need a net connection, plus bridge is a memory hog. It is also one strong reason I pity adobe software.
I use bridge a lot at work after an event and I have to sort through 200 pictures to find 10-15 to put up on the site and on flickr. It’s incredibly useful as you can just quickly give them ratings and then sort by those ratings.
I do use Bridge a lot, and for all the reasons you mentioned. Yet, the reason I like it is that I can sift through old pages and find out how I colored things–I have a lot of characters and settings, so that’s a big deal to me. The filmstrip mode give you a nice big image to look at, you can sort through a lot material quickly, and it even has limited zoom ability. Thumps up to Bridge.
Not an illustrator but I use bridge for approvals with my team at work. It actually has been the ultimate in what we do to streamline our process. I can approve work and my team can see what is approved, needs work, or is out right off brand, etc. Love bridge.
/ryan