{"id":12891,"date":"2008-09-29T21:59:59","date_gmt":"2008-09-29T21:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.adobe.com\/jnackdev\/2008\/09\/whats-new-in-bridge-cs4.html"},"modified":"2008-09-29T21:59:59","modified_gmt":"2008-09-29T21:59:59","slug":"whats_new_in_bridge_cs4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/29\/whats_new_in_bridge_cs4\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#039;s new in Bridge CS4?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">In this cycle our goal was to unlock the power of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/products\/creativesuite\/bridge\/\">Bridge<\/a>.&nbsp; Bridge was already a highly capable, feature-rich application, so instead of slathering it with new features, our first task was to get more people to discover and use what&#8217;s there.&nbsp; That meant changing the bang for the buck: raising the discoverability &amp; usability of existing features while lowering the barriers to use (speed, launch time, memory usage).&nbsp; We also wanted to add some key features that would help photographers while broadening the appeal of Bridge for all creative professionals&#8211;things like Web gallery creation &amp; upload, and PDF contact sheet creation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">Adobe evangelist Julieanne Kost hast posted a great 30-minute tour of the new version:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><embed src=\"http:\/\/tv.adobe.com\/Embed.swf\" width=\"400\" height=\"250\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\"><\/embed>\t<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\nA <a href=\"http:\/\/tv.adobe.com\/#vi+f1483v1648\">higher-res version<\/a> is available on the Adobe TV site, and Julieanne has posted an excellent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jkost.com\/pdf\/photoshop\/cs4\/BridgeCS4.pdf\">5-page PDF overview<\/a> that covers the details.&nbsp; If you&#8217;re looking for a quicker bulleted list, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.adobe.com\/jnack\/2008\/09\/whats_new_in_bridge_cs4.html#more\">read on<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<li><strong>Faster performance<\/strong>, supporting thousands of images per view\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Refined work environment<\/strong>: The Bridge interface sports numerous tweaks that make it easier to find and access functionality, from the customizable workspace switcher bar to the &quot;trail of breadcrumbs&quot; navigation bar. \n<\/li>\n<li><strong>One-click full-screen previews<\/strong>: Tap the spacebar and Bridge will fill your screen with the selected image.&nbsp; Click anywhere on the image to zoom in to 100%.&nbsp; Use arrow keys to navigate among images, or tap the spacebar again to leave the full-screen view mode. \n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Collections<\/strong>: In addition to Bridge&#8217;s existing ability to save a query as a collection, the app now support more free-form collections&#8211;virtual folders into which you can drag any combination of assets.&nbsp; A file can live in multiple collections, and the contents of collections can span multiple folders.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Greater control over previews and caching<\/strong>:\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<li>Sometimes, when doing a first quick pass through photos, you don&#8217;t need or want to spend time rendering the raw data for display.&nbsp; Instead, just looking at the JPEG embedded by your camera is enough to make a keep\/reject decision.&nbsp; Bridge now supports an option to display just embedded JPEG data when browsing images.<\/li>\n<li>On the flipside, sometimes you&#8217;d rather spend a little extra time building full-size previews of your images, so that when browsing you can immediately check image details.&nbsp; Bridge now supports options for building full-size (1:1) previews and for caching these on disk for reuse. \n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Spotlight\/Windows Desktop Search integration<\/strong>: Bridge is, at heart, a file browser, meaning it has a very direct connection to your file system.&nbsp; File systems, however, are becoming more database-like in their ability to search quickly across tens of thousands of files.&nbsp; By tapping into the operating system search mechanisms, Bridge can provide a front end to a whole disk (or a number of volumes at once). \n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Review Mode<\/strong> for refining selections: This carousel-style view lets you step through a series of image, whittling down your selection by knocking out non-keepers by pressing the down arrow. \n<\/li>\n<li>Built-in <strong>Web gallery creation<\/strong> and upload:&nbsp; Back in the day, my Web design team would inevitably find itself racing to gather a bunch of assets (Illustrator files, PSDs, etc.), conver them to JPEG, knit together a series of HTML pages, upload them to a server, adn then call the client for review.&nbsp; Now you can greatly simplify the process by selecting files in Bridge, tweaking and previewing settings, and uploading everything directly from Bridge.&nbsp; Templates include Flash &amp; HTML options. \n<\/li>\n<li>Built-in <strong>PDF contact sheet creation<\/strong>: Similar to Web gallery creation, PDF creation is part of the Output workspace and offers a much more interactive creation environment than the earlier Photoshop Contact Sheet plug-in. \n<\/li>\n<li><strong>List view<\/strong> enables viewing and sorting by a variety of criteria (rating, file type, etc.), and it works especially well with the <strong>much faster Filter panel<\/strong>. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Thumbnail grid view<\/strong>, a.k.a. &quot;Grid Lock,&quot; makes it possible to keep images from appearing halfway on\/off the screen while scrolling.&nbsp; This facilitates image review for those who like to use a grid of thumbnails.&nbsp; (This one&#8217;s the Jeff Schewe Memorial Feature.) \n<\/li>\n<li><strong>3D file format previews<\/strong>: Bridge now provides an animated preview of the 3D formats (3DS, OBJ, U3D, and Collada) supported by Photoshop Extended. \n<\/li>\n<li>The option to <strong>auto-launch at login<\/strong> helps ensure that Bridge is already set to go when you need it.&nbsp; Additionally, on Windows Bridge is able to return to a sort of &quot;stealth mode&quot; when quit, meaning that it eats a very small amount of memory but can relaunch extremely quickly. \n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Auto-collection of HDR and panorama images<\/strong>: This is probably my favorite little &quot;mint-on-the-pillow&quot; feature.&nbsp; Bridge can look at a selection of images, analyze both their pixels &amp; their EXIF metadata, and automatically stack together components of panoramas &amp; HDR merges.&nbsp; Once it has built these stacks, you can choose &quot;Process Collections in Photoshop&quot; to have PS batch-create panos &amp; HDR files.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve really been enjoying using this one after walking around on vacation. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this cycle our goal was to unlock the power of Bridge.&nbsp; Bridge was already a highly capable, feature-rich application, so instead of slathering it with new features, our first task was to get more people to discover and use what&#8217;s there.&nbsp; That meant changing the bang for the buck: raising the discoverability &amp; usability [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12891"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}