Every 18 months or so Adobe Photoshop upgrades to a new and better version, progressing from Photoshop 1 to Photoshop 7, and then confusing the issue somewhat by changing to Photoshop CS and now, CS2. Serious Photoshop users generally bite the bullet each time and upgrade, while others elect to skip a version and to upgrade every other time. CS2 is definitely a version to upgrade to, if for no other reason than the Bridge.

The Bridge replaces CS’s File Browser, which displayed a preview window and thumbnails of the images in your folder. CS2 takes that further, providing several optional views, including Thumbnail, Filmstrip, Details, and Versions and Alternate Views. The various views can be used for an initial edit, as well as for sorting and filing images into new or different folders.

In the lower right-hand corner of the preview window there are several icons that represent the various views. Simply holding the cursor over an icon displays the name of the view, so it is easy to select whatever view you prefer by simply clicking on the icon. I often prefer using the Filmstrip View for reviewing and editing the images, but on a given day you might find me using the Thumbnail View instead. Tastes vary, and the view you’ll need may depend upon what you’re doing, so it’s important to remember to toggle between several different views at first to determine which one best suits your needs.

The Details View provides image information, including shutter speed, aperture and ISO, but you can get the same information, and more, by going to File>File Info, so I rarely use this view.

Regardless of the view you choose, the images that appear in the large palette (I am in the Thumbnail View for this illustration) can be resized by simply moving the slider found in the right-hand corner of the Bridge. Moving the slider to the left minimizes the size of the images, and moving it to the right maximizes the sizes of the images so that only two or three images will show in the window when you are in the Thumbnail View.

Sizing down to the smallest scale is impractical, since a longer file name will not be displayed in full and the thumbnail image will be too small to discern anything. In the Thumbnail View it’s best to move the slider to the right until a truly viewable image appears. That size may not display the entire file name, but that’s not very important until you actually rename the files, which I’ll do shortly.

In the Filmstrip View I can maximize the size of the filmstrip appearing across the bottom by dragging the slider completely to the right. I like a compromise here, where the thumbnails on the filmstrip are large enough to see clearly, while still providing a very large view of the selected image.

The Default View of the Bridge shows three windows or palettes on the left side: the Favorites/Folders, the Preview, and the Metadata/Keywords palettes. It may not be important for you to see the entire Bridge window display once you’re in a folder and looking at images contained. If you were familiar with the File Browser, you probably know that you can resize different palettes to best fit your needs and you can do the same thing with the Bridge. To expand the image palette, position the cursor so that it is on the line separating the different palettes. By doing so, the cursor becomes a double-headed arrow. By moving left or right, or up and down, depending upon the orientation of the line the cursor is on, you can resize the palettes to best fit your needs.

In this way you can customize your workspace, making a huge preview window for editing, or enlarging the Folder panel to scroll through folders, or maximizing the Metadata and Keywords folders if you’re adding material here. You can do this for each palette or for the same palette using different configurations based upon the task at hand. Once you’ve set your working space, you can save that workspace by simply going to the Bridge’s View drop-down menu and typing in a descriptive name.

Under Window>Workspace>Save Workspace, click on Workspace and a dialog box appears. Type a name that customizes that workspace for you. If you are the only one using your computer, you could simply type "Big Preview for Editing Using Filmstrip," for example, or add your name if you are sharing your computer.

Should you need to return to the original Workspace, or to any other workspace that you’ve created, just return to the View>Workspace dropdown menu and select the appropriate workspace. The Default Workspace is already there for you, titled “Reset to Default Workspace.” Click on that to get to the Bridge’s original palette configuration.

You can scroll through your images in several ways: by clicking on each individual thumbnail, by clicking on the right arrow on your keyboard, or by rolling your mouse wheel. You can delete images by either hitting the delete button or by clicking on the Trash icon found in the upper right corner of the Bridge window. Next to the Trash icon there are two rotation arrows for changing an image’s orientation, which is handy if your vertical images are displayed horizontally.

After you do your initial cull it is generally prudent to rename those images that remain. Remember, the file names assigned by your camera are generally meaningless when you’re trying to locate an image by its subject or content. A camera-assigned name like _HR27645.CR2 won’t tell you much when you’re scrolling through Windows looking for a particular image. Granted, you could open up folders in the Bridge to actually see the image files, but it takes a few minutes for the Bridge to generate thumbnails and can waste a lot of time. Renaming a file only makes sense.

This can be done several ways. The slowest way would be to simply click on the file name of a selected image to highlight the name, and then type a new name in that box. This would be extremely tedious for several images, but might be the fastest method if you are only renaming one image.

If you’re dealing with several images the Bridge allows you to batch rename, just as the File Browser in CS did. Under the Tools drop-down menu, click on Batch Rename and a renaming dialog box appears.

Using this dialog box is easy. First, unless you have a particular reason to do otherwise, it’s probably best to have "Rename in same folder” checked in the Destination Folder box. Under New Filenames you’ll note that there are two panels, or windows: Text and Type New Text. To the right of this window is a + sign, while the - sign is grayed out. Clicking on the + sign will add another column of panels, with additional sets of drop-down menus. I’ve typed “Whitetail Deer Fawn” in the Type Text box.

You’ll note that at the bottom of the Batch Rename dialog box a Preview window shows the First new filename which reflects what I’ve just typed. Clicking on the + arrow will now add another line of data where I can add to my file name.

For the second line I’ve simply typed an underscore mark in the Text box. Normally I type in a space with my spacebar, but for clarity in this illustration I chose an underscore. The reason will be clear in the next box.

After clicking on the + sign again, I chose Date from the drop-down menu. If you look at the Preview name there’s now an underscore mark which separates “Fawn” and "27," but had I not typed in the underscore the file name would have read “Whitetail Deer Fawn27" which I find confusing. In the Date windows, by default, Today appears in the second panel, and MMDDYYYY appears in the third. I don’t like to date my images by year, but by selecting DD for today’s date I’m helping to insure that my new file name will be unique. Each file name must be, because if two names are identical, and one is dragged into a folder with a preexisting file of the same name, a prompt will appear asking whether or not you want to overwrite the file. If you click Yes, you’ll overwrite and lose the original file. Unique file names prevent this from happening.

I’ve added another text box and typed in another underscore line to separate portions of the caption. You’ll note that in the Preview window the new file name is displayed, along with the original, meaningless file name. Now, by clicking + one more time, I’ll add my final bit of information.

In the last panel I selected Sequence Number and then selected Five Digits. By assigning a five-digit number and today’s date, it is extremely unlikely that I’ll ever overwrite a file, as it is very improbable that I’ll shoot a whitetail deer fawn on the same day of another month. However, should you worry about doing so, you could add a letter instead of an underscore, or use Sequence Letter to further distinguish a file.

If you are like me, you’ll still have plenty of images to look through after doing that initial cull. CS2 has a really handy new feature that makes further editing much easier by assigning a star or stars and/or a color to a particular image. Personally, I don’t care for the stars because it’s easy to look right past them, but the color-marked images really stand out. I can assign a color by typing in the number 6 for red, 7 for yellow, 8 for green, or 9 for blue—or I can assign stars by typing the number 1 for one star up to the number 5 for five stars.

Your Bridge window will become a confusing mess if you assign a combination of colors and stars to all sorts of images. Decide upon a system that works for you and keep it simple. I use colors almost exclusively, and assign the color red to my favorites, yellow for images I’ll put on the Web, and perhaps blue for some oddball reason.

I can assign stars to a colored mark, which I’ve done here for illustration purposes, but normally I simply use colors.

After doing so, I can preview only the marked images by going to the upper right corner of the Bridge, and clicking on the dropdown menu for Unfiltered (the word changes to Filtered when you do so) where I can choose any number of combinations.

Here I’ve chosen Show Labeled Items Only which previews all my color-marked and starred items. If I want to see only the red marked items, I can select Show Red Label, or any number of different combinations.

Although assigning colors or stars may be all you need, you might also find it helpful to drag your color/star tagged images into a special folder. You can move images simply by clicking on the images and dragging, or you can copy the images by holding the Control key down while you click and drag.

You can make new folders in the Bridge by simply right-clicking inside, just as with any Windows program. Then, to move images into a new folder, go back to the Default Workspace so that the Favorites/Folders panel is visible in the upper left of the Bridge window. Click on the Folders tab to bring that up front, and then navigate through the folder tree until you find your new destination folder. Your original folder should still be visible in the Thumbnail View, provided you didn’t click on a different folder in the Folders window. If that happened, you’ll have to navigate back to the original folder.

To move an image, click on the Thumbnail View and drag. If all the images you want to move are together you can click on the first image, hold the Shift key down, and click again, and all the images are selected. That’s easily accomplished if you used the Filtered feature to bring up your colored or starred images. If the images are separated, hold the Control key down while you click on each individual image. As you drag, an icon that resembles a hand of cards appears, indicating you are moving files.

Once all the images are selected, you’re ready to move them to the new folder. Holding the Control key down while you move a file copies the images into a new folder while retaining a copy in the original folder. Simply clicking and dragging moves the files, so the new folder will contain the image files but the old folder will not. This can be confusing at first, so until you get a handle on your image management it might be safest to Control-click and copy the files.

We’ve covered a lot with the new Bridge, but there are still a lot of interesting new features, both in the Bridge and in the Photoshop program. We’ll look at some of these in a future issue.