A Computer Darkroom Tutorial

 

A pet peeve of many Adobe Bridge users is features that don't work in a manner that makes their use as intuitive as they should be. A good example of such a feature is "Collections".

For example, in Photoshop Elements the user can define a Collection and then drag a "virtual copy" of any image or group of images they like into the Collection. Also, the image can be part of any number of Collections. The advantage of using a Collection is that it allows you to keep the "real" images in their original location and therefore consistent with whatever file management structure you normally use (e.g. shoot, date, etc). The Collection is created manually with images being added to it by  dragging the image thumbnail into the Collection. Removing images is equally simple - just drag the image out of the Collection. If only it was this simple in Adobe Bridge, but alas it isn't.

In Adobe Bridge Collections are really just "saved searches". In other words, there is no way for you to create a Collection without first defining the "Search Criteria" (e.g. a keyword) and the location to be searched. Likewise there is no way in which we can subsequently add or subtract images to/from the Collection without first ensuring that such images have all of the relevant search criteria defined as it was in the original search. With Bridge new images are only added to the Collection after you run a new search. Furthermore, "manual sorts" are not supported by Bridge Collections so you can't arrange images as freely as you might wish. Given these limitations many users have expressed a fair amount of disappointment with Bridge and Collections in particular, but all is not lost. This short tutorial is intended to help work round the current limitations of Collections in Bridge by allowing you to use a method, which is broadly similar to that used in Photoshop Elements. The method described below uses Shortcuts/Aliases, which you can drag into a new folder that will act as your Collection. I don't pretend that it's in an elegant solution, but it's certainly better than nothing.

Creating Manual Collections

• Using Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac) create a folder with a name of your choosing into which you will be placing your "virtual" images. This folder will act as your Collection. The example shown in the screenshot is Zion National Park.
• Again within Explorer/Finder, locate the images that you wish to include within the Collection and create a "Shortcut" (Windows) or Alias (Mac) for each. These shortcuts/aliases will act as "virtual" images.
• Drag the "virtual" images into the Collection folder you created above.

As you can see from the screenshot shown below shortcuts/aliases will appear as thumbnails just like the original images, hence the name "virtual" images. You should note that they include the curved arrow symbol on the bottom left corner, which should help you differentiate them from the original or real images in the future.

New virtual images can be dragged into the Collection folder at any time and Bridge will automatically update (i.e. the Collection is dynamic). Also, if the original image is renamed the virtual image will normally keep track of it, although occasionally the link might break. However, relocating the original often results in the link being broken, so be careful to check after moving files.

 

 

Other things to note are: -

• You can rename, rate and label the "virtual" images independently of the original.
• If the original is a "camera raw" file then it can only be opened in a Photoshop hosted version of Camera Raw (i.e. double click the thumbnail or choose Open).
• When Raw images are edited in Adobe Camera Raw all virtual copies will be updated so their appearance reflects the edited original.
• Edited images and the virtual copy will also have a small Badge placed on the bottom right corner of the thumbnail. The following screenshot explains most of the Badge types that you're likely to encounter when using either Camera Raw or Bridge.

 

 

• You can view the metadata of the original image from the virtual copy, but cannot edit it.
• Manual Collections are searchable.
• Images can be members of  more than one Collection.

Finally, the method described above can also be used with PSD, JPG and Tiff, but I haven't checked to see if there are any additional limitations to those outlined above.

Addendum

Although not directly related to this tutorial I've also included a bunch of Bridge Collections (predefined saved searches). They can be downloaded (file is only a few KB's) from here. To install them simply drag and drop them into the Bridge Collections folder, the following screenshot shows how this can be done.

 

Installing Bridge Collections