March 2006
Bridge Tip
A recent query on the Adobe Bridge User to User forum reminded
me of a technique that I had developed some months back to locate images
where I may have forgotten to insert data into the IPTC Description
and/or Keyword fields. You would think that finding such images
would be a fairly simple task, but it isn't. The reason it isn't so
simple is that Bridge has no direct way of searching for empty
IPTC metadata fields. Hmm, major oversight you think, well Yes and
No! Yes it's an oversight and it's also a PITA, but it's not the show
stopper it could have been.
Now, I make no claims to the use of perfect English or grammar for
that matter, but I do know that there aren't too many words in
day-to-day use that don't contain at least one vowel or the so-called
semivowel "y". So, how do we get from vowels to a blank IPTC Description
and/or Keyword field? Easy, if we keep our keywords and
descriptions legal <g> then a Find (Edit menu or Cmd/Ctrl+F)
operation using the appropriate criteria will return only those images
where the relevant IPTC field is empty. The following screenshot is an
example to show how the Find dialog should be configured so that images
that have no IPTC Description data are displayed.
Once it has been run you can save it as a Collection and
reuse. Alternatively, you can download an already created Collections
for finding images with empty IPTC Keyword or Description field from
here. The installation instructions can be
found below in the January tip.
Not long after posting this tip Adam Pratt of Adobe suggested the use
of the use of a " " (i.e. a space as the search criteria). Whilst it's
really only suitable for single word keyword or descriptions it's still
a useful option.
January 2006
Bridge Tip
If there's one thing that lets Bridge down it's easy method of
locating and displaying images that match very specific criteria.
For example, say you wanted to display: only portrait format images,
only landscape format images, only images with the sRGB ICC profile
embedded, only JPEG images, and the list goes on. Well, there is a way
but it involves using the Find feature, which is located within
the Edit menu (I know, it's not very intuitive). Anyway, using
Find we can easily save out Collections, which is really a fancy
name for "saved searches". Now before you run away, I know Bridge users
love to hate Collections, but they really are your friend.
The following screenshot shows how the Find dialog needs to be
configured if you were wanting to show only JPEG images. Noticed that
I've activated "Include All Subfolders" and " Show find results in a new
browser window". Whilst these two options aren't essential they do make
the resulting Collection a lot more useful when searching through large
numbers of files and/or folders.
Find - JPEG Images
This Collection is particularly useful to digital cameras users who
capture both JPEG and RAW format files but later want to view only the
JPEGs. I know lots of Bridge users find the whole topic Collections too
complex, therefore I'm providing some of my own for your use. They can be
downloaded (file is quite small) 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
Contd. on next page
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