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Seeing More Than One Folder Of Images At A Time
If you’d like to see more than one folder of photos onscreen at the same time, it’s no problem, because in CS2 you can have multiple Bridge windows open at the same time. Just press Command-N (PC: Control-N) and a new Bridge window will appear (your previous Bridge window will still be there). Now, navigate to the folder you want to display in this window, and you’re set-your original window is still open, and your new window is showing some new photos. Mighty darn handy stuff for a Buckaroo like yourself.
Deleting Folders From The Bridge
This is one Adobe snuck into CS2, and they made so little fuss about it, hardly anyone realizes they did it—you can now delete entire folders from right within Bridge. Just click on the folder and press Command-Delete (PC: Control-Delete). Now, with great power comes great responsibility, so don’t just start deleting stuff all willy-nilly (by the way, I have no idea what willy-nilly means), because those folders have photos in ’em. Even though you’ll get a warning dialog before the folder disappears, make sure that before you click OK to delete a folder, that’s really what you want to do.
Resetting Bridge’s Preferences
Want all the options in Bridge set back to the factory defaults? Then close Bridge, hold down Command-Option-Shift (PC: Control-Alt-Shift) and then launch Bridge again. A dialog will appear asking what you want to do. Turn on the Reset Preferences checkbox and click OK. Now when Bridge appears, the preferences are factory-fresh.
Keeping Bridge Always On Top
The idea behind Bridge is to use it to manage all your images for all your programs, and if you’re doing just that, you’ll definitely want to know how to keep Bridge up front, and floating above whichever program you currently have open. First, click on the Switch to Compact Mode icon that appears in the upper-right corner of Bridge’s Options Bar. Then, once it switches to Compact Mode, a new icon will now appear to the left of that icon—the Switch to Ultra-Compact Mode icon (I kid you not). If you use either Compact Mode, Bridge will remain at the foreground just like a floating palette, no matter which program you’re using. To stop the floating, just click on the Switch to Full Mode icon (which had been the Compact Mode icon—it changes its function depending on the mode you’re using—I know, it’s confusing).
Renaming Your Label Colors
Although you can’t change the color of the color labels themselves, you can change each color’s name to something that makes more sense to you when you’re sorting your images. For example, if you want change the Green label to read “Keepers,” just press Command-K (PC: Control-K) to go to the Bridge Preferences, click on Labels (along the list on the left side of the dialog), and then delete the word “Green” that appears to the right of the green dot, type “Keepers.” Click OK to close the Preferences dialog. Now, when you look in the Label menu, it will be updated with your new name.
Uncluttering Your View
Want to hide all of that distracting info that appears beneath your thumbnails? Just press Command-T (PC: Control-T) and all that stuff (even the file names) is hidden, giving you a clean, unobstructed view of just your images and nothing more. When you want the all the distracting junk back, just press the shortcut again.
A Sneak Peak At Your Photo’s Data
You don’t have to go digging through your photo’s EXIF data to learn more about the image. Just hover your cursor over a photo’s thumbnail for a moment, and a little yellow window will pop up with some brief background info, like the file’s format, size, pixel dimensions, date created, date modified, resolution, etc. However, this only works if you have Tooltips turned on, so if you don’t, press Command-K (PC: Control-K) to open the Bridge Preferences, choose General (from the left side of the dialog), and turn on the checkbox for Show Tooltips; now try the hovering trick again.
Rating Your Images In Full Screen Mode
This is one of the most effective ways to sort your photos after you’ve imported them from your digital camera, because you can only really tell which photos are in sharp focus when they’re viewed at nearly full screen. So in Bridge, Shift-click on all the contiguous photos you want to review, press Command-L to launch the slide show, press W to see the images full screen, and then press Spacebar to start the slide show. As a photo appears full screen, just press numbers (1–5) to rate that photo instantly. For example, a photo appears onscreen and it’s not that great, type 3 and it gets a three-star rating right on the spot. Try this once, and you’ll start doing this all the time. Unless of course, you hate it—then you’ll probably never do it again.
Separating Your “Best Of The Best”
If you’ve rated some of your photos as five-star photos (the best of the bunch), aren’t there some five-star photos that are better than the others? You know, the best of your best? Of course there are, and now you can separate just those (so you can really see the cream of the crop). Here’s how: First you must view just your five-star photos, so choose Show 5 Stars from the Unfiltered pop-up menu near the top right of the Options Bar. Then Command-click (PC: Control-click) on just your best five-star images to select them. Control-click (PC: Right-click) on any selected image and choose a color from the Label submenu in the contextual menu that appears (I chose Red). That color is now tagging your best five-star images. To see just your red five-star photos, go back to the Filtered pop-up menu (it’ll change from Unfiltered to Filtered once you’ve selected an option), and choose Show Red Label. Now you’re seeing your “Best of the Best.”
Creating New Folders The Fast Way
Want to create a folder from right within Bridge? Scroll down to any open space (you’ll usually find a blank spot at the bottom of your list of thumbnails, so scroll down there), then Control-click (PC: Right-click) and from the contextual menu that appears, choose New Folder. Note: If you don’t see any empty space, adjust the size of your images using the Thumbnail Size slider along the bottom of the Bridge window.
Rating Multiple Photos At Once
If you see a number of photos in Bridge that you want to have the same rating, first select the images (Shift-click on them or Command-click [PC: Control-click] noncontiguous images), then drag your cursor over the rating area (those five dots that appear below any selected thumbnail). The rating you apply to that one photo will be applied to all your selected photos.
Open Any Folder With A Simple Drag-And-Drop
Want to open a folder of images in Bridge? Just drag-and-drop the folder directly onto the Preview panel. That’s it. I wish this tip was longer, but it’s just not.
Scrolling Thru The Views
Want to quickly scroll through the different thumbnail views in Bridge? Press-and-hold Command (PC: Control) and the Backslash key (\). Hey, don’t scoff at this seemingly innocent shortcut—Mac users have been waiting years for any shortcut that makes use of the Backslash key.
Undocumented Bridge SlideShow Tip
Here’s one that slipped below the radar—if you’re watching a slide show of your images in Bridge (by pressing Command-L [PC: Control-L]), and you come across an image you want to open in Photoshop CS2, just press the letter O.
Blur That JPEG And Shrink It Down
Here’s a cool tip for when you’re creating JPEG images. This tip doesn’t work for all images, but can really come in handy for others. The tip is this: Because of the way JPEG compression works, if you can slightly blur your image, the file size will be smaller. You could just add a Gaussian Blur, or you could blur the image directly from the Save for Web dialog by entering a number in the Blur field. However, you’re usually better off putting a selection around the important areas of your image, then inverting the selection (by choosing Inverse from the Select menu) and blurring just the background. That way, the important parts stay sharp, and the noncritical areas become more compressed.
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Photoshop Tutorials
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Wild West Grunge
Corey shows you how to recreate this rugged, weathered look using a couple of filters, blending modes, and layer masks.
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Wall of Text
Use a clipping group to place an image inside of a background of text, with another layer of text placed in front to create depth.
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Natural Brushes
In this tutorial Corey shows you how to take an existing image and turn it into it’s own custom brush.
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Custom Coins
In this tutorial Corey creates a realistic-looking coin effect using the channels palette and the lighting effects filter.
Text Shape Layers
Converting text into shapes allows you to distort the text as you like while retaining straight, clean edges.
Borders Under a Minute
Create really cool borders in under a minute to use on virtually any one of your photos or even video for that matter.- Custom Coins
In this tutorial Corey creates a realistic-looking coin effect using the channels palette and the lighting effects filter. - Natural Brushes
In this tutorial Corey shows you how to take an existing image and turn it into it's own custom brush.
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Creative Contrast in Photoshop CS3
In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at some interesting techniques for improving contrast using the Shadow/Highlight command, empty adjustment layers, blend modes, and the Blend If sliders in the Layer Style dialog. -
Enhanced Workflow in Lightroom 1.1
In this article, we'll focus on techniques that will strengthen your workflow skills and simultaneously reveal some of the new features in Lightroom 1.1. -
Handlin’ Photoshop and Illustrator Content in Flash
we’ll take a look at how things work across Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash-specifically, some features and techniques for getting rasterized Photoshop content and vector Illustrator content into your Flash movies. -
Understanding Channels in Photoshop CS3
Photographer Chris Alvanas wants to go over Channels, because understanding what they are and what they do is key to understanding what their potential is.
Removing Those Typographically Incorrect Spaces
If you’re trying to set type that looks typographically correct in Photoshop, there’s an old habit you’ll have to break, and that’s the curse of putting two spaces at the end of every sentence. This is a holdover from people who at one time used traditional typewriters, where adding two spaces was necessary, but in typesetting that’s a huge no-no. About 70% of the text I copy-and-paste from text files that people give me has two spaces, but I use this Photoshop tip to fix the problem in just seconds. First, go under the Edit menu and choose Find and Replace Text. In the Find field, press the Spacebar twice (entering two spaces), then in Change To, press the Spacebar just once. Click Change All, and every time Photoshop finds two spaces at the end of a sentence, it will replace it with just one, making you typographically correct.
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Photoshop CS3 for Photographers Tour May. 19 - Nashville, TN
Photoshop CS3 for Photographers Tour May. 22 - San Francisco, CA
Photoshop CS3 for Photographers Tour May. 28 - New York, NY
Maximum Photoshop Tour May. 30
