Start in Ado be Bridge

Use Adobe Bridge to examine, rate and filter your images

Adobe Bridge is the image organiser that comes as standard with Photoshop CC.

It’s a great tool for sorting your images, choosing which you prefer, then opening them. At first glance, it may seem little more than a file browser. But look closer and you’ll find lots of useful features. Along with an array of controls for keywording, rating and filtering your images, there are handy tools for batch renaming files, creating panoramic stitches, making contact sheets, and much more.

First and foremost, Bridge is a great place to look through your images and decide which ones deserve to be played with. Here’s how…

Open files

Double-click a file to open it in Photoshop. Raw files will automatically open in Adobe Camera Raw, but you can open JPEGs and TIFFs in Camera Raw too, by right-clicking and choosing Open In Camera Raw from the resulting menu. To open several files, hold down Cmd/Ctrl and click the thumbnails to select more than one, or hold down Shift and click to select a sequence.

Preview window

It’s usually a good idea to have a large preview window. Click the image for a magnified view, which is useful for checking image sharpness. Press Space to bring the image full screen, or press Cmd/Ctrl+B to enter the Carousel view.

Customise the display

The panels that make up the interface can be resized and repositioned to suit your needs. Drag panel tabs to different parts of the interface, and drag the dividing lines to tweak the size of each area. You’ll find the full list of panels under the Window menu.

use a Card reader

The most convenient way to transfer images from camera to computer is via a card reader – much easier than connecting the two with a cable.

Star ratings

Add a star rating of one to five. This is one of the easiest ways to pick your favourite images. Click below a thumbnail to add a star rating, or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+1-5. You can then filter your images by the star rating.

Metadata

The Metadata panel contains useful information recorded by your camera, such as aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation, focal length, colour bit-depth and colour space.

Filter your images

Once you’ve rated the images you want to use, click the star menu at the top of the screen to choose filtering options, or go to the Filter Panel (Window > Filter) to sort them by categories such as aperture settings, orientation or ISO.

use the cursor keys

Use your keyboard’s cursor keys to flick through groups of images. Press any letter or number to jump to files that begin with that character.