Top 10 Reasons You Should be Using Adobe Bridge

Top 10 Reasons You Should be Using Adobe Bridge

on Aug 29th 2012 with 26 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Apps Used: Adobe Photoshop CS6
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Estimated Completion Time: 13 Minutes

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 5 of 34 in the Shortcuts on Psdtuts Session
« PreviousNext »

Do you use Bridge? If not, you’ve been missing out. In this episode Martin will share his 10 favorite features of Adobe Bridge to try to convince you to incorporate it into your workflow. Let’s get started!

 
Enjoyed this Post?

Subscribe to our RSS Feed, Follow us on Twitter or simply recommend us to friends and colleagues!

By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Martin is a Hungarian graphic designer, digital artist and an Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor (Design Master). He is currently teaching and working in London but usually travels around the UK and share his love for Adobe products and graphic design. You can follow him on his blog or on Twitter.  

Plus Premium
 
 
  • Doug

    For photographers, there’s a valuable article (or series of short video clips) that show how Lightroom has many benefits over Bridge, reglardless if you use Photoshop in your workflow.

    I used Bridge for a few years, but once I started using Lightroom, I couldn’t go back.

    http://scottkelby.com/2011/100-ways-lightroom-kicks-the-bridge-and-camera-raws-a/

    If your workflow isn’t similar to photography, this may not be totally applicable — desktop publishing, web creative, etc.

    • http://eddiepotros.com e11world

      I watched them all and not impressed with the way they’ve done their videos. Totally biased and more like 20-30 good features and not 100. There was at least 15 that they completely embellished upon just to be able to add it in there.

      They both serve different purposes and this video really sold me much more than the 100. The export feature in LR is definitely sweet but bridge does have much better ones since it’s not only for photos (and videos).

      Finally, they compared it to photoshop and camera raw in many videos (again just to fit the 100) which I didn’t like at all. Words to them, DO NOT TRASH PHOTOSHOP!! IT IS BEST AT WHAT IT DOES and we all know that.

      I think I will use both especially until LR supports files stored on a network (my ReadyNAS has everything and the only way I’d use it now is to copy all to local PC and set a backup in the NAS to duplicate all files to it every night so a bit of a hassle).

      • http://www.mattk.com Matt Kloskowski

        It’s ok… you can still use Bridge… it’ll be our secret ;)

  • Dan Rockstreet

    Well, if one does not have any other viewer, then Bridge is a good tool. I started off with ACD See, used Raw Shooter Essentials and eventually moved on to Adobe Lightroom. I have basically never used Adobe Bridge, although it has some nice feats and integrates nicely into an Adobe workflow.

  • http://bryankun.deviantart.com Bryan G C

    And I just used it because I can see a proper thumbnail of the files, which doesn’t happen in Windows Explorer… Amazing tips, thanks a lot!

  • Mike

    Very well explained.
    I’m going to give it a go :)

  • http://graphicriver.net/user/Giallo?ref=Giallo Giallo

    ehhe it’s funny how the Web is full of tutorials about how much is important Bridge, why is so necessary, why is so useful. But then anybody uses it :D

  • http://facebook.com/Bhiqm Bjorn

    Great Tips! :) I! I definitely I will use Adobe Bridge right now! xD

  • Trevor

    Very good as usual, thanks…

  • http://www.startsomething.net.au Sean Christians

    Great video – look like I’ve got a lot to learn about Bridge:) Thank you!!

  • http://www.cartondonofriopartners.com K.C. Hunter

    I didn’t know Bridge was for anyway, except that it came with Adobe Suite.

    So, I think I might try this out, but it seems like a bit of a departure for how I usually work.

  • http://www.gie.web.id Ogie

    Hi,

    Nice review Martin! I’ll now start using Adobe Bridge for sure. Cheers!

  • http://alrazaak.com alrazaak

    last Sunday i bought Photoshop cs6 version and now searching for adobe bridge cs6 tuts and found this page good article about bridge cs6

  • http://www.behnum.com BehnUm

    Just couldn’t help not appreciating you in the comments. Well explained and I believe I am convinced.
    Thank you.

  • Le Goff JM

    There are some more features really cool.

    If you have a DAM (as CQ5) and you use AdobeDrive to mananage it, you can use Bridge as a browser of the dam and add version control, check-in/check-out features to your asset.

    If you use InDesign, you can list the files linked in those indesign files (It’s a pity that you can’t have the same behavior for Illustrator ou Photoshop files; it could be usefull in Photoshop extended to link files instead of embedding them, the same for dynamlic layers (to preserve generating huge PSD files)

    When you use version control (DAM required) you can manage (promote, delete, duplicate) these versions….

    You can drag’n drop files (multiple files at one time) from Bridge to an illustrator document to place them as linked files…the same in InDesign

    And so many other features this list is non exaustive…

  • Szymon Mosiolek

    Rispect! You convinced me :) I always thought that Bridge is useless but now see I was wrong.

  • http://byazrov.com vladimir byazrov

    Doesnt sell it for me. Bridge is the most boring, heavy app with terrible ui and it is worse than any of popular alternatives. It’s definitely nowhere near the perfect Fast stone viewer.

  • SimonWM

    Can I batch export as another file type? Lets say I have a bunch of TIFF or JPG files that I want as PNGs.

  • http://eddiepotros.com e11world

    I’m going to look into the 100 videos LR is better than bridge but the thing is I want one tool to use for all my thousands of photos to organize and quickly retouch.
    I’m looking for speed of viewing/finding/editing (watermarks and simple leves/curves/shadows) and all my images are on a network shared NAS and I don’t know if I have to import everything but I’m willing to give both a try for a week or so before sticking to one.

    Nice video and definitely sold me on bridge and not sure why I’m not using it but because I do MULTIMEDIA it might be better than lightroom. Thanks for the tips!

  • http://www.copyrightimage.com Stephen Johnson

    Even on very fast systems there is a latency in Lightroom when scrolling through monitor sized previews. Bridge has much less latency, very usefull when editing tens of thousands of images from wildlife photographers.

    Always worth building the cache on a large folder before editing.

    So bridge first to edit then Lightroom to manage, look forward to the functions of Lightroom with the speed of bridge, I’m sure someone very clever at Adobe could do it.

  • http://www.ericuysphotography.com Eric Uys

    I have been using bridge for a couple of years now, pity they took out some cool features but still. using bridge to edit and then using the batch image processor is amazing as all your files are run through photoshop en save thorugh photoshop. I still believe you get a better image that way as photoshop has the best algorithms for saving files whereas LR uses your operating systems algorithm for saving files. My setup is such that if I edit a file in LR and quickly want to go edit file within bridge for processing, I can do so quickly without opening LR and I will see all the edits done to the file, exactly the same as in LR.

  • Silas Paul

    Congrats Martin,
    You convinced me to work with Bridge.

  • ruth norman

    Have just bought PS CS6 until I saw this video I had no intention of using Bridge, now I have changed my mind big time. Thanks for the tutorial. Its Great

  • http://www.facebook.com/ExcellentGraphicsStudio Keshaw Gajadin

    Bridge is actually a quite good program to work with, output feature is a big movee!! :)

  • bccmee

    Incredibly helpful tutorial, especially the output feature and the ability to port images into layers in one Photoshop document. Thanks a lot!

  • pre140

    all these tuts are really helpful for a beginner. It covers all info i need to know to improve. Thx a lot.