Creative careers hold more potential than ever before. New businesses are springing up all the time, and existing companies are branching out in new and interesting ways to create meaningful customer or client experiences—and, of course, gain new business in a crowded market.
For creative professionals who work with images, opportunities are arising all the time. Whether they work with graphic design, photography, video editing, or other kinds of visual art, businesses (and individuals) want and need beautiful artwork. Because of the draw to images, it’s important for these creatives to be able to organize their assets. After all, scrolling through 1,000 images or hundreds of video clips each time you want to create a new project is time-consuming and inefficient.
Adobe Bridge offers a great way for visual creative professionals to organize themselves. When this software was released in 2005, many were intrigued by the new creative hub concept but not impressed by how it functioned. Over the last 17 years, the program has been redesigned to be more useful and efficient than ever before.
In this overview, you’ll learn what Bridge is, the key components, and how and where to learn it if this skill would benefit your career and/or business.
What is Adobe Bridge?
Adobe Bridge is a creative hub for previewing, organizing, and publishing creative assets. This program is a dynamite way to manage designs and videos from one centralized place. A few of the best features include:
- Being about to add & edit metadata on individual and groups of files
- Ability to use a star rating system to find assets quickly & easily
- Seamless integration between Bridge and other major Adobe products, particularly Photoshop (Bridge can even do batch Photoshop editing without opening Photoshop)
- Collections and Albums that can sort projects with ease
- An equal file handling experience between Mac and Windows operating systems
Professionals from many industries use Bridge to organize and maintain their work. If you handle large numbers of assets like photos, graphics, and/or video, Bridge might be an excellent and time-saving tool to use.
Key Components of Adobe Bridge
Adobe Bridge is an incredibly useful program for handling visual files. Although some may initially feel it cumbersome to have a separate dedicated program for file management, in the long run, it’s helpful for organizing, maintaining, and accessing project assets from one centralized location instead of trying to remember what something is called or where it’s saved.
As you explore the possibilities Bridge has to offer and begin to think about how it would fit into your workflow, these six features are important to keep in mind.
Metadata
One convenient perk of creating a searchable visual library is to have information about each image. Whether it’s the file name, document type, resolution, or what camera was used to capture the image, this metadata information makes a difference.
Bridge offers a place to update any metadata fields you might want. You can update images individually or perform batch updates by creating presets you use often. Once the correct metadata is on each asset, you can search Bridge for files with this criteria: for instance, if you wanted to find all the images you took using a specific camera.
Metadata also allows you to accurately describe your creative assets and work with them in a personalized way. You can structure the metadata however you want/need, and Bridge facilitates having this information in one easily accessible place.
Tools to Find Files
One of the most critical aspects of Bridge is the ability to find files and the tools designed for previewing and finding files. Although there are many tools available in Bridge, the rating system, use of keywords, and ability to filter based on content are some of the best features.
Rating System
Like Adobe Lightroom, Bridge utilizes a star rating system which allows you to rank images, videos, and other Adobe files from one to five stars. This is particularly useful if you have similar images and want to be able to find the best ones without having to wade through the entire batch. When you use the rating system, you can also search for assets with a specific star rating, meaning if you only want to see five-star image files, you can limit your search, and only five-star labeled files will appear.
Keywords & Labels
Have you ever wanted to search a group of images based on who’s in them? Or a unique aspect? Bridge allows you to do this with keywords. Simply add keywords to any image, such as sunset or the name of a person, and they become searchable by that term. Additionally, you have the option to label files with colors, which is great if you work on a team where others will be accessing the files, too.
Filter Based on Content
One of the more unique ways to find files in Bridge is through filtering. Although ratings and keywords are a type of filter, Bridge allows more advanced search options as well. For instance, you can filter search results based on white balance and color profile. When you’re working on a project where the images all have a specific type of content, you can quickly find them, and even do some batch editing tasks right within Bridge.
Connected to Photoshop, Illustrator, & InDesign
If you’re using Photoshop, Illustrator, and/or InDesign, consider trying Bridge for file management. Not only can you search for file types, but when you open the files in Bridge, it will automatically open the corresponding Adobe program. That means if you’re working on a Photoshop file and click on it in Bridge, it will open the PSD file in Photoshop without having to go into Photoshop, find the file, and open it. These connections work particularly well with Illustrator and InDesign, too, although you can work with After Effects and other similar files as well.
These seamless connections allow you the option to do bulk commands within Bridge, especially for Photoshop. Bridge can load multiple images into Photoshop as separate layers, which is perfect for creating composites—one of Photoshop’s most sought-after capabilities. Illustrator and InDesign also have these kinds of specialized functions within Bridge.
Exporting
Bridge isn’t meant for design work. It leaves the heavy lifting of creating art to the other Adobe programs designed to do those tasks. The program can export several types of files and image outputs, though.
One of the most popular export features are PDF Contact Sheets, which are generally used for showing collections of images in smaller form before choosing which to print. Bridge can add a watermark to these images, and create full sheet outputs for client and team review as well.
Collections
Collections, sometimes called albums, are simply a selection of photos taken together or photos you choose to group together based on specific criteria. For example, wedding photographers might create a collection for each wedding they shoot.
The organization and file-finding capabilities Bridge offers are excellent for creating searchable collections. It also has a nifty tool called smart collections. Smart collections allow you to set criteria and when any photo or creative asset comes into Bridge that meets that criteria, it will automatically be added to the collection you choose. This saves time and effort going through and manually sorting if you know ahead of time that all of a certain file type or all images from a certain camera need to go into a collection together.
Equalizes Mac v. Windows Experiences
Each designer has their own preferences in terms of computers. Many prefer Mac, others use Windows. It’s been an ongoing debate for years, although these days the technology is about equal in terms of what it can do.
Each operating system uses its own way to achieve the same tasks. In general, the Mac OS allows for more previews of files, although the Adobe programs run on either system. Bridge overrides the operating system differences and creates a more equal experience for file maintenance and organization no matter which OS you work from.
In other words, you use Bridge instead of the search bar on Windows or the Finder feature on Macs. This is helpful, especially for those professionals who may work with both systems because it’s a smooth transition. Not to mention Bridge was built to be a visual file browser, which means it’s really good at what it does no matter what brand of technology you’re working with.
Careers that Benefit from Bridge
Although job descriptions and listings typically don’t list Bridge as a requirement or even a preferred skill, there are several careers where it’s helpful to know.
Considering that Bridge’s main goal is to preview, organize, and publish creative assets, it’s perhaps not surprising that the professionals who most benefit from the program are creatives.
These are some careers who benefit from and use Bridge the most:
- Graphic Designers create designs for digital and print projects. They usually work with customers or businesses, and can also coordinate the production of items featuring their design, like hats or shirts. These artists can use Bridge to collect their digital assets and organize them according to project or client, as well as make simple bulk edits to a project without having to open individual files.
- Photographers capture life’s special moments and turn them into tangible memories of a specific time. With all kinds of specialties, taking photos and working with them is what unites the profession. It stands to reason that photography portfolios demonstrate a creative’s skills and the special touch they bring to their images. Using Bridge, creating these portfolios is simple and efficient, especially with the ability to do advanced filtering and add keywords to images.
- Video Editors work closely with multiple forms of media to create professional videos. They often add sound and graphics to video projects, as well as work with raw video footage to get it ready for editing. Their portfolios focus on video projects and special skills they bring to the table (such as creating special effects). With the ability to connect to Premiere Pro & After Effects, alongside the long list of organizational tools, Bridge is an ideal asset management system for these motion graphics artists.
How to Learn Bridge
If Bridge sounds like an ideal solution for your workflow, your next question may be how to learn it. After all, a tool is only helpful if you can use it efficiently.
One of the best perks of Adobe programs is that you can learn the basics for free. There are free Bridge tutorials from Adobe to get you started, and a thorough user guide to help as you have more specific and/or advanced questions.
When you’re ready to take your training to the next level, Noble Desktop offers Bridge training as part of Photoshop courses. They have a variety of Photoshop courses and a more in-depth Graphic Design Certificate option. Some of Noble’s popular Photoshop training courses include Photoshop in a Day, Photoshop Advanced Retouching, and Photoshop Bootcamp.
Where to Learn Bridge
Ready to learn more about how to use Bridge? There are many options for in-person, live online, and specialized topic courses.
Noble Desktop offers several Photoshop courses. From Photoshop Bootcamp to Advanced Retouching, there are classes for beginners and more advanced users.
Interested in learning online? Find live online Photoshop courses using the Noble Desktop Classes Near Me tool. The Classes Near Me tool offers a concise way to see what training courses are available from multiple different training schools. You can locate Photoshop courses in your area with the same tool.
How Do You Purchase Bridge?
Bridge is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud.
You can’t purchase the application on its own, but it does come included with single app subscriptions. For instance, if you purchase Photoshop or Illustrator ($20.99 per month each), you will get access to Bridge through that subscription.
You can also use Bridge through the Adobe all apps plan. For $52.99 per month, you’ll be able to use more than 20 applications, plus plenty of non-software benefits. With the all apps plan, you can use Bridge with multiple apps. This is a great perk for creatives or businesses that use Adobe multiple apps on a regular basis because it ends up being cheaper in the long run than subscribing to the apps individually.