Lessons
Lesson Info
Overview of Bridge Workspace
Now we're in Photoshop in general. Let's take a look at how things are laid out. The first thing I'm gonna do is come over here and just change one setting on my screen that should get this to look more like it would look if you'd just installed Photoshop. I won't describe what that setting was until later on because you probably haven't messed up the layout of your screen yet like I have. So in Photoshop we first need to know how can we open our pictures. Because otherwise we're just gonna to be working with empty documents like this one. So let's go to both Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop and see what we need to know to preview and open our images. So there are two different ways I can access Adobe Bridge. I could launch it like any other program. Which on the MAC could mean coming down here to the dock and clicking on the bridge icon if it's there. The second way to do it would be right here in Photoshop and go into the file menu and choose Open in Bridge. Or Browse in Bridge. When...
I choose Browse in Bridge Bridge should eventually come to the front. And if it doesn't I'll click on here in my dock. And this is what Bridge looks like. On the left side of your screen you should have a folder list. And this is gonna list all of the folders that make up your hard drive. If you click on the name of a folder it will then show you the contents of that folder. And you'll see little thumbnail images. You can expand or collapse a folder. I'll zoom up over there so you can see it a little better. But I can collapse these or expand them. And if there's no triangle next to a folder it simply means there are no further sub folders found within there. But I could expand each one one of these. Then click on the folder to see its contents. Once I'm viewing the contents of a folder at the bottom of my screen is a little slider that determines how big the thumbnail images will be. And I could make them huge, or I could make them quite small so I can see a lot of them. If I click on a picture, then on the right side of my picture. Or on the right side of my screen will be a preview. And if that preview's rather small you can make it larger by just going to this area. That is listed as preview and if you go just to the edge of that, you can drag. So I can make it takes up more space vertically. And if I go to the left edge I can drag it over to make it larger the other way. So now I can click through my images and see a larger preview. But if I really wanna view the contents of a file without actually opening it all I need to do in Bridge is press the space bar. If you press the space bar it's gonna view it full screen. And if you wanna see not just this image but the whole series of images that are in the folder you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard. I'll use the right arrow key and I can cycle through all the images that are found in this particular folder. If I wanna get out of this view I can just press the escape key on my keyboard and it'll get me back to where I see the thumbnails. Another thing you'll be useful to know about in Bridge is remember we had a slider here down at the bottom where we could make our thumbnails larger or smaller? There's a keyboard shortcut for changing that. If on the MAC you hold down the Command key and press plus or minus, you can change his size. On Windows that would be the Control key in plus or minus. There are a couple of other things you might need to do to files. And that would be first you might need to change the name of a file. In Bridge all you need to do is click on the name of the file. And then just click once more on the name. And it'll become highlighted so you can type in a new one. (keys tapping) If you want to rename all of the files in this folder if you're already renaming one, you can press the Tab key to go to the next and start typing a name right away. Hit Tab again you'll go to the next and so on. So you could go through an entire folder of images and quickly change their names. Or if you'd like to change the name of all the files in a folder and that folder might contain hundreds of pictures you could come up here and choose Select All from the Edit menu to get all the images chosen. And then if you go to the Tools menu there is a choice called Batch rename. I'm not gonna go into the details of it but just know in there you would be able to name multiple images and potentially number them on the end. But now let's figure out how we can open these images in Photoshop? We have a couple different methods to do so. First, if it's not a raw file, instead it's a JPEG, a TIF or some other common file format all you need to do to open a file is double click on it. That should open it directly into Photoshop. I'll go back to Bridge. If you wanna open multiple images you can click on one, hold down the Shift key and click on some others, to get them selected. And then if you wanna add or take away individual files instead of holding Shift. If I hold Shift and click on this last image I get all of them in between the last one I had and where I just clicked. If you wanna get rid of individual files hold down the Command key. That's controlling windows. Then when you click you're just gonna toggle is it selected or not? Then I can double click. And I've just opened up a bunch of images into Photoshop. And they're found under various tabs. I'll close those. Go back to Bridge. Then there's a special way of opening these images which means you're to open them in Adobe Camera Raw. Well if you have a raw file, which is what this one is the file name ends in cr2. And that means it's not a JPEG, it's not a TIF. It's what's known as a Raw file and we'll talk more about those in another class that is about Camera Raw. But if it's a Raw file you double click on it and it's gonna bring you to this special screen that's known as Adobe Camera Raw. And you could adjust the image using these sliders. But it's only gonna do that if it was a raw file. If I have a JPEG file or a TIF file and I'd like to open it in Camera Raw I can go to the File menu in Bridge and there's a choice called Opening Camera Raw. And that's gonna send a non Raw file in here. I have a separate class about Camera Raw that we'll be doing later. And therefore I'll detail exactly how you go about adjusting the images using that. The other thing I can do is drag an image to Photoshop. If I have a Photoshop on my dock, I can do that. Or if I can see an open document in Photoshop. Like let's say I was in Bridge over here and I changed the size of the windows so I can see what's behind it. I could drag from here up to the Photoshop document and that would actually add it to that document. So that's enough about Bridge. You now know how to navigate your hard drive. You do that in the folder list in the upper left. You know how to change the size of your thumbnails with the little slider down here at the bottom. Preview your image in the area that's to the right or hit the space bar to see it full screen. Pressing escape to get out of that view. Rename it by clicking on the name. And to open just double click on a file.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Pierre-Marie OUDOT
I really enjoy to get this update of the PS course. If we still have the "easy to teach" Ben's touch, the new approach per main topic is more easy to access". Nevertheless, I would strongly suggets to provide a general Table of contents (Topic/lessons) to be able to get back in the appropriate lesson when needed.Thank you and congrats
Alan Humbard
I found this class okay with the exception of some of the individual chapters incorrrectly titled. Example would be the last says Lightroom instead of Photoshop. He also speaks at nuke speed. I'm guessing Creative speeded up to make the class shorter but I don't think it's recommended for all ages.
Corinna Huerta
Ben's style is easy to follow and he goes into depth without going in so deep that you lose him. I have been watching Ben's classes for several years and never fail to learn something significant from each class that I watch. Highly recommend!