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Provides: Access your "stuff" for CS5 inclusion/manipulation
Developer: Adobe
Requirements: Mac OS X v10.5.7 or greater, Intel processor. 1GB RAM, 2GB of disk space
Premium Retail Price: Provided for free with every Adobe Application

Bridge CS5 continues its development with improved speed, more output options, better customization in creating web galleries and PDF exports, better batch renaming, and the introduction of Mini Bridge, to name just a few of the new features in CS5. Despite all that, Bridge took baby steps compared to all of the other CS5 applications. Thus, while some of the changes are welcomed and desired, they are also limited and not fully fleshed out.

It may seem strange to spend some time reviewing a piece of software that you cannot purchase, even if you try as Bridge is given away for free with almost every Adobe application. But Bridge is still special, in some ways a strange application that is many things, but is also short of being a complete version of any one of those things. At best, it can be described as a File Browser; but it is more, much more than just a File Browser since it has some (but limited) DAM (Digital Access Management) features; it has Keywording, but that will only go so far as it's a limited DAM; it has a bit of the kind of file organization that you can do in the Finder; it has some batch processing features; and it can view (to some degree) most document types. But despite Bridge's limitations, it's always the first application I start up when I'm using just about anything Adobe.

Bridge is first and foremost an image browser. It's origin came within Photoshop and was known a The FileBrowser. Bridge as a separate application was first unveiled in CS2. From the very beginning Bridge was a handy place to both view files and to send them off for various operations in Photoshop, InDesign, and other CS applications via scripts from Bridge's Tools menu. From the very beginning people complained about how much time it took Bridge to build thumbnail images. This new release of Bridge may still take more time to build thumbnails than other image browsing programs but Adobe does have an important reason why Bridge is slower: all other image browsing programs display the built-in JPEG image that images contain. [This is the same JPEG image that Apple uses in their "Cover Flow" feature.] The JPEG image is what the image is, but if you depend upon color accuracy, you want to see what the image looks like and not what a composite if the image looks like.

Probably the biggest initial hurdle Bridge has it the default workplace Adobe straps it down with. As shown below, Adobe places the thumbnails in the middle with the Preview hidden in the upper right. Admittedly I have the space allocated for these components scrunch down so the whole window can fit within the 500 pixel width limit we have here at Applelinks, but even when expanded out to fill a screen, the Preview is still too small to properly and efficiently examine an image.

The good news is that EVERY panel in Bridge is drag gable to any of the available three columns. The bad news is that all panels must be contained within those three columns and are not allow to float. In addition, a panel is not allowed to exist more than once. That is, you cannot have two Content Panels open at the same time to view the contents of two different folders. Alas.

Fortunately Bridge comes with a variety of saved Workspaces and (more importantly) you can make your own. The one I typically use has the content along the right side with the Preview Panel provided in the middle as wide and tall as possible. I still have access to all the Panels that I need, but most of all I can see large views of my images.

As stated, one of the more desired new feature is a faster generation of the image's cache. It will probably take longer than you'd like, but it will be faster than it was. Annoyingly if you do something in the Finder, Bridge will very likely want to rebuild the cache the next time you go to the same folder.

Another new feature is the Export Panel from which you can easily export any image as a JPEG to Facebook, Flickr, Photoshop.com, or to save the JPEG to your hard drive. You can setup your preferences so that you do not have to re-enter them each time. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, this is not as good as what already exists in Lightroom 3 (or Lightroom 2). One such limitation can be seen below where you can only constrain to fit one size. If, for example you have a mix of portrait and landscape images and wish to limit the portrait size a different size, fagettaboutit.

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Probably my favorite updated feature is the Output Web Gallery. This is because you can now customize any of the dynamics and finally SAVE those customizations. In Bridge CS4 is was profound frustrating to customize this, that, and the other and then realize that save those settings for the future use. In addition, you can now set the amount of JPEG compression on any of the images you were saving. In case you didn't know, any time you saved images out from the Output Panel in CS4, you were saving the images at a JPEG compression of 12 (the maximum). While that's great if you need to send a JPEG for printing, it sucks if you are sending a JPEG off for web view. What I still long for is the ability to copy any image (into a web gallery) as is and not re-save it as you could in CS3. [The reason for this wish is that when you resize an image, you should adjust the sharpness. If the resizing and saving is done without your input, that option is not available.]

In the Output as PDF, a new option provides much greater control on watermarks in your image. In addition you can use an image as a watermark. Surprisingly (and very disappointingly) the watermark option is not available for images in a web gallery.

Probably the biggest aggravation with the Output Panel is that you still need to scroll up and/or down to access all of the various features, but you cannot scroll with your mouse's wheel. I don't mean to sound like I'm whining here, but this is annoying. It's always the little things.

One of the new features presented back in CS4 that I love was the Path Bar (aka the Bird Trail) displaying the trail of folders to get you where you are viewing within. In CS5 this was enhanced, or not depending on your point of view. As shown below, you can see that currently I'm in my Computer > Magrathea (the name of my partition) > Family Pictures > Vacations. The thing that's nice about this is that I can click on of the earlier folders to back up and proceed down a different path. Note below that the Vacations folder (or any last folder in the chain) has Bold text. If you click on the bold text, the Bird Trail line turns immediately into a text driven navigation tool. So, if you are a keyboarder, this has got to be great news. [I'm not, so it's irrelevant to me.] On the other hand, if you drag a folder from the Finder to this region, Bridge will snap to that folder. I think that this is more a benefit for Windows users who cannot drag a folder onto their Start menu to open the folder as we can from our Dock. [Note: you cannot change folders names from here, it can only be used for navigation.]

My biggest frustration with the Path bar (and this is not new) is that you turn it on or off from the Windows menu, not the View menu. I don't have a clue either.

Amongst some of the other new features: now Batch Rename provides a dropdown menu for any saved rename formats; a boomerang can be seen in the tool icons across the top of the Bridge window that will "snap" you back to Photoshop; and if you click on an InDesign document from within Bridge, an option in the View menu will let you see (and access) all of the Linked files

Mini Bridge

If Bridge has left you head-scratching, you are likely to continue head scratching when you check out Mini Bridge. But if you love Bridge, you will REALLY love Mini Bridge. All MB is is a trimmed down Bridge living inside another application. Currently MB is only in Photoshop and InDesign and is sure to land in more applications by CS6.

Mini Bridge shows up as a Panel from within the application. One of the limitations is that Bridge must be running for MB to function. If Bridge is not running, when you open a MB Panel, Bridge will automatically sef-start so MB can open.

Once opened, MB does pretty much what you'd want and expect such a Panel to do. While you can step through the folder paths to any specific folder you want to access, the easiest approach is to simply go to Recent Folders to access what you were just working with--and that's the key: you do not go to MB first. MB is where you go to to access images you've already processed and digested. All the processing needs to be done from within Bridge. That's what Bridge is for and it does that very well. What MB is great for is accessing images that you want to work with from within an application.

In many ways, it's rather ironic for MB to show up in Photoshop because that's where the File Browser used to be located and now, Bridge has come full circle back to Photoshop. While processing a series of image from MB in Photoshop works out to be very nice, where MB shines is if you are working on a collage and have all of your images processed and ready to go, ready to simply drag into Photoshop. Also, if you are a Photoshop teacher or presenter, now you can have all the images you plan to use ready and accessible right in Photoshop. In InDesign this is truly heaven. You can either drag images right to where you want them in ID or select your images in MB, and select Place into ID right from within MB. While it would be nice in Illustrator, what I'm REALLY looking forward to is when MB is in Dreamweaver. Alas, it is NOT in DW yet.

Maneuvering in MB is fairly straightforward: the forward and backward arrows take you back and forth from the folders you've visited (like a browser), the home folder takes you to MB's preferences, the magnifying glass will let you search for for Spotlight to your computer, the folder you are in or a Bridge search in the current folder. The folder you are in appears on the top and the ">" symbol will take you to any folder contained within the folder you are in. Clicking on the down-facing arrow before the folder you are in will take you backwards in the Bird Trail.

Of note is the Funnel icon where you can do limited filtering, and that's probably MB's biggest weakness. You can standard filtering on ratings and/or labels, and that's it. If you had selected only TIF images while in Bridge, when you access that folder in MB, you will be looking at all image types, not just TIF images. You do have several options such as Filtering for TIF images, give those images a rating or label and then you will be able to work with that set of images in MB. Alternatively you can place any of these images into a Collection and access them that way. In other words, there are options. The problem is that you have to use options.

In short, the updates to Bridge are not outstanding jump up & down features. Well, except for the improved PDF and Web Gallery features. Those are worth having a beer for. The JPEGs to Social Media is good if you have limited needs/expectations (otherwise you may chose to also purchase Lightroom 3). MB is wonderful, but currently limited to only Photoshop and InDesign.

A ringing endorsement this is not, but Bridge still remains the application I start first if I'm working with Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Illustrator.

Things I'd love to see for CS6 include: better cache control; the ability to save the image cache when saving images onto a CD or CVD; bring the output features up to par with Lightroom; although I have no need for this, the ability to access images on a server would be major asset.

[Because this is not a product that can be purchased, there is no rating.]

• Overview - Adobe Creative Suite 5

___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.