Tip of the Day | Page 59

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).

May 14th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

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.

May 11th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

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.

May 10th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

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.

May 9th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

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.

May 8th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

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.”

May 7th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

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.

May 4th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

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.

May 3rd, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

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.

May 2nd, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

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.

April 30th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

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Photoshop Tutorials

- Reverse Restoration
  Corey shows you how to make a new photo look damaged by blending in some unusual textures.
- Rain Drops
  In this tutorial, Corey not only creates the raindrops, but also the splashes that are formed with the raindrops hit the hands.
- G.I. Joe
  Corey's tutorial this week was inspired by a real American hero!

More Fun with 3D

Continue exploring the possibilities with Photoshop’s new 3D tools.
Reverse Restoration

Corey shows you how to make a new photo look damaged by blending in some unusual textures.
3D Background Effects

Use Photoshop’s new 3D tools to create some dazzling background effects.
Striking Match, Part 2

In the second part of this tutorial, Corey finishes creating this illustration of a striking match.

Layers TV: Episode 110
New episodes are coming soon. In this old episode, RC goes start to finish through a Flash CS4 project using the new 3D tools and importing an audio file. Corey talks about the distortion features inside of Adobe Illustrator. You can download each episode by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes. var so = new SWFObject('http://media.kelbymediagroup.com/players/player.swf','mpl','500','300','7'); so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true'); // so.addVariable('type','rtmp'); so.addVariable('file','http://media.kelbymediagroup.com/switch/video/layers-tv-episode-110.mp4'); so.addVariable('plugins','hd-1'); so.addVariable('hd.file','http://media.kelbymediagroup.com/switch/video/layers-tv-episode-110-hd.mp4'); so.addVariable('hd.state','false'); so.addVariable('image','http://www.layersmagazine.com/images/layerstv-logo.jpg'); so.addVariable('height','300'); so.addVariable('width','500'); so.addVariable('autostart','false'); so.addVariable("backcolor","0x000000"); so.addVariable("frontcolor","0xF1F1F1"); so.addVariable("lightcolor","0xF88E21"); so.addVariable("quality","100"); so.write('player'); [...]
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 for Mac
The new professional-level Quadro FX 4800 with 1.5 GB of memory brings a much-needed performance upgrade to the Mac Pro lineup.
Prezi
Prezi is a Flash-based visualization, storytelling, and presentation tool that allows you to create nonlinear presentations.
Terry White’s New App | Printing from Lightroom 2
Happy Thursday everyone! Just wanted to pop on in and share what’s new in the intranets: Terry White’s New Iphone App Terry white over at his techblog is usually covering all sorts of technology and letting us know what his favorite apps are for the iphone. He’s taken that love and mixed it with [...]

Adding Keywords to Multiple files

In Bridge, you can add keywords to images to make searching for pictures a little less cumbersome. You don’t, however, want the process to become tedious as well. By either Command-clicking (PC: Ctrl-clicking) or Shift-clicking on images, you can select multiple files inside Bridge. Once you have the files selected, you can go to the Keywords panel and turn on any keyword you like. This will apply the keyword to all of the files that you have selected. It takes away a little bit of the pain of categorization, but just a little.