NoBs Digital Dogbowl
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Keeping you up to date and informed on the latest, coolest, and outrageous happenings inside the world of NoBS Photo Success.
Loaded with Free photography tips, Photoshop tutorials, photo reviews,
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A Bridge Not Too Far For Workflow
An overlooked feature of Photoshop CS 2 and CS 3 is Bridge. For many they view this as just an image viewer program, but it is so much more. I will be the first to say that the first (and even the second) version of Bridge were a bit clunky. However, most of the problems were corrected in CS 3 and it was vastly improved upon.
But, let’s see just how much more Bridge can do for photographers with just workflow. Once Bridge is installed, when you hook up your camera to the computer or just put your camera card in a card reader Bridge should pop up asking if you would like some help downloading the files. I say yes and when the viewer comes up with the images, I go a bit further with what I want Bridge to do. First, I download the files into their own folder with a name and date. If this was a client, then I use the last name and month/year (Smith0608) . I also rename the incoming files to the same name along with numbering (Smith0608_0001.CRW) with the original camera file name embedded in the Metadata. I will put my copyright and general keywords to these files too as they are being downloaded. When all of this is done I make a backup of the files on a CD and place it in a safe place.
Before I do any work on these files, I add some subfolders to this file for later. Folders with names like PSD, Proofs, Prints, and Extras. PSD is for those images I have worked on in Photoshop with layers and like. Proofs might be contact sheets or small proofs from images. Prints are flattened images for printing, and Extras is where I copy emails, scanned contracts, notes, receipts, and the like. All of these are under the general file heading so that when I am done with the files for the client I can copy it to a DVD and put it next to the first CD of the original files.
Another Bridge tip is that you can use the Tools>Photoshop for Image Processor and make all the copies jpegs or even PSD files from all or just selected images. So that if you are shooting RAW, you don’t have to shoot RAW + Jpeg which eats up space on your card, and the Jpegs are from finished images and not just right out of the camera. You can also rearrange the order of the images for Contact Sheets so if you want the client to see just a few or only the best from the session you can do this. As a side note you can also use InDesign for contact sheets if you have it loaded. What is nice about this is InDesign can do a better design or even special touches for a bigger impact.