For this particular technique, you need to be able to see the Enhanced Path Bar in Bridge:

If you don’t see the Path Bar, choose Window > Path Bar:

Now, as with Eplorer in Windows 7, and Finder on a Mac, you can click the folder names in the Path Bar to navigate immediately to the selected folder. And, when you double click a folder in the content panel or the folders panel to navigate into that folder, the Path Bar expands to include the current folder.

However, try this: Click the > symbol that separates the folders in the Path Bar. A menu pops up showing all folders at that level (Hint: you can also right-click in Windows or Control-click on a Mac to activate this menu):

Now, choose a folder from the popup menu. You’re in Folder Cruising mode. Clicking a folder expands the Path Bar to that folder, and displays all the sub-folders at the new level:

Once you’ve reached your destination, you can stop folder cruising by choosing that from the menu, by clicking directly on a folder in the Path Bar, or by clicking elsewhere in the interface:

What a great feature!

But, the Path Bar does even more. In Bridge CS5, you can drag a folder to the Path Bar to open it (although I’m not sure how this is better than double clicking). A blue rectangle appears when the folder is dragged onto the Path Bar, and dropping the folder opens it immediately:

And, if drag and drop or clicking are too simple, you can also edit the path manually by typing it in. Clicking once on the last item in the Path Bar changes the bar into a text field where you can manually type in the path (might be useful for changing to a different drive altogether):

Finally, don’t forget that Bridge includes Navigation Buttons, which provide “Forward/Backward” navigation capability, just like in your browser. And, the little downward triangle next to the Navigation arrows gives a history list of recent folders:

Bridge is just full of little navigational tricks – poke around and you’ll find lots more. Meanwhile, until next time, happy cruising!

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If you’d like to try Nik Sofware HDR Efex Pro there’s a free trial on their website.

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Last week, we examined Bridge CS5’s capability to export multiple files with the Image Processor script. We found a powerful utility, but one that had a few shortcomings. In today’s tip, we’ll take a look at Bridge CS5’s Export Panel, and we’ll find some new capabilities, including the ability to perform the following tasks while exporting files en masse:

• Files can be resized with a variety of resampling algorithms;
• Metadata can be added or deleted on export, including adding keywords or applying metadata templates;
• Multiple jobs can be queued for running in the background without tying up Bridge or Photoshop;
• Existing files can be handled gracefully.

We’ll see all this and more as we step through Bridge’s Export Panel.

Prerequisite: Adobe Bridge CS5 version 4.0.2 or later

To start with, check your Adobe Bridge CS5 version (click on Help > About Bridge…) and make sure you are using at least version 4.0.2.x (better yet, the current version of 4.0.4.2, as of this writing) – the earlier version that originally shipped with CS5 had an error in which the Export Panel was disabled. If you need to update, you can choose Help > Updates… from Bridge’s menu.

Using the Export Panel

Once you have verified you are running 4.0.2.x or later, go ahead and open the Export Panel. You can find this panel in the lower left of the Essentials workspace, or if it isn’t visible, choose Window > Export.

In a past tutorial here on TipSquirrel, I covered exporting to social media sites (such as Facebook) with the Bridge export panel, and this is similar. But today, we will focus on the Save to Hard Drive export feature. To start, simply select a bunch of images, and drag and drop them on the preset as shown:

Once you have dragged at least on image onto the export preset, the panel changes – some new icons are added, indicating that an export job is in the queue:

Once files are queued, simply click the black arrow pointing up and away, and the export job will begin:

However, the generic Save to Hard Drive export preset has no parameters of its own, so we get the Export dialog box. We set our parameters here:

Some of these options should be quite familiar – we saw some of this last week in the Image processor script. But, there are some new ones as well. The options in the Destination tab include:

• Export either to the original location, or to a specific folder (and optionally to a subfolder)
• Specify how to resolve naming conflicts for existing files. You can rename the files, overwrite existing files with the same name, or skip the file when you export.

In this case, I’ve directed the files to a folder on my desktop called, “TipSquirrelExample” and I’ve asked Bridge to rename to a unique name if there is already a file in existence with the same name.

Notice the second tab, for Image Options:

Again, there is some similarity to Image Processor, but some new features here as well:

• Choose Don’t Resize, or Manual Size if you want to change the size

If you choose manual size, you have additional options:

• Constrain to Fit: Enter the maximum dimension of the longest size of the image. Aspect ratio is maintained, but the image will be reduced to fit within this dimension.
• Resample Method: choose from three methods: Bilinear, Bicubic, and Bicubic Sharper. I tend to use Bicubic Sharper since I’m usually reducing the image size. You can consider Bilinear to be “medium” quality, and Bicubic to be “lower” quality.
• Always render from Fullsize image: I honestly don’t know why this is even an option. Please always select it!
• Image quality: Can range from 1 to 12; this controls JPEG compression quality.

With the export panel, you also get better control over metadata. If you include the original metadata, you have several choices:

• Include all image metadata
• Include Copyright data only
• Include Copyright and Contact Info data only
• Include all except Camera and Camera Raw info

You can also add keywords to be applied on export; I’ve specified a couple in the example above.

At this point, you can click Export and away you’ll go.

But – there has to be a better way, right? If you know me, you know I’m going to show it to you. We can save this setup as a preset and use it again later. Just type a name for the preset in the text box at the bottom of the dialog box, and click Save.

Here I’ve named my preset TipSquirrel-Example, and after saving you can see it in the Export Panel:

Of course, there is an easier way to create these presets as well – you can create them instantly by using the icons at the bottom of the panel. Click on the “+” icon to add a new preset:

This time we get the same dialog box, but it is called the “Add Preset” dialog this time. We’ll create a preset this time for sending photos to Mpix for printing. We will again start by specifying a folder on the desktop where we want the images to go, and specifying that existing files should simply be overwritten:

Switching to the Image Options tab, we tell Bridge NOT to resize our images, render from fullsize, maximum quality, and include copyright and contact info only in the metadata:

Giving this preset a name (Mpix – To Print) and clicking save, we see the new preset immediately in the Export panel:

Clearing a job from the queue

Notice our original job is still in the queue for the Save to Hard Drive preset, as evidenced by the export icon. Let’s get rid of it. Next to the export icon is the delete job icon, we can click this to remove the pending job from the queue:

Queuing and exporting multiple jobs

Now, let’s load up our presets with some jobs. First, we drag a bunch of files to the TipSquirrel-Example preset, then drag a couple more files to the Mpix – To Print preset:

Now, we can click one of the export icons, and the selected job will start running.

Notice that it runs in a completely separate Bridge window, and you can go back to the original Bridge window at any time:

Clicking on another export job icon launches that export job as well, and each is listed in the export Bridge window:

Once the jobs are complete, the progress bar is replaced with a curved arrow, for “Reveal Job.” Clicking this launches a new Bridge window displaying the output folder:

Deleting a Preset

You can delete a preset from the list if you no longer need it. Once again, just look to the bottom of the panel for the trash can icon. Highlight your preset and click the trash can:

You’ll get a confirmation dialog; clicking Yes removes the preset:

Editing a Preset

You can also make changes to an existing preset. Simply highlight the preset, and click the Pencil icon,which is the Edit Preset icon:

This brings us back to the same dialog we’ve seen all along, now called the Edit Preset dialog:

Make your changes and click Save. There is another prompt to confirm your changes:

And the changes are saved into the preset for future use.

Summary

Exporting images for various uses is a constant and important part of our workflow. It can be boring and time consuming, but with the tips from last week and this week, you now have some powerful automation tools to speed things up and let you focus more of your precious time on the fun part of your workflow – the creative part!

To recap – Image processor allows you to export multiple images to a variety of formats with plenty of options. The Export panel gives you the ability to export JPEG files only, but with greater control and with the ability to queue multiple jobs with easy-access presets for a variety of purposes.

Either way, the power is in your hands to automate your workflow and make you more productive. So, what are you waiting for? Get to it!

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Bridge CS5 includes some new export features (which we will review next week) but the Image Processor Script has some unique capabilities that make it a relevant and useful utility. However, it remains somewhat of a mystery to those who haven’t used it. Today, my mission will be to not only introduce you to this feature, but to empower you with the knowledge you need to use this tool confidently whenever the need arises.

Image Processor has several features that combine to bring tremendous synergy into one dialog box:

• The ability to process multiple images, even across different folders
• Save the output into a designated folder
• Save to any or all of JPG, TIFF and PSD formats
• Resize images to a specific maximum size during the export process
• Run an action during the conversion process
• Add copyright information prior to saving the output

The many different features of this script, combined into a single dialog box, make for a somewhat scary-looking dialog – but don’t worry, we’ll step through the process sequentially and it will all become clear!

You can run Image Processor from within Photoshop, but I recommend running it from Bridge – you’ll have more control over the images you choose. Let’s take a look, starting in Bridge. You’ll want to select the images you want to process. You can select from Folders, Collections, filtered results or search results. In this case I’ve selected 20 images with a one-star rating within a folder containing more images. After filtering on one star, I clicked the first image and pressed Ctrl-A (Mac: Cmd-A) to select all:

With the images selected, choose the menu item Tools > Photoshop > Image Processor…

This launches Photoshop, and brings us to the dialog box shown below, which we’ll take one step at a time:

Notice that the dialog box is conveniently broken into numbered sections to guide us through this process. We’ll follow the numbered guides in this description:

Part 1 – Select the images to process

When you run this from Bridge, as I’ve demonstrated above, there are no choices here. The selection is hard-wired to “Process files from Bridge only (20).”

There is a checkbox labeled “Open first image to apply settings.” I almost never use this, but for camera raw files, this will launch the ACR dialog box to allow you to make camera raw settings that will then apply to the entire set of images. Also, for JPG or PSD files, this will allow you to open the first image to choose a color profile if the files’ color profile doesn’t match the working space. As I said, I usually just leave this blank.

Part 2 – Select location to save processed images

As you process the images, where do you want to save the output? You can save in the same location, or choose a folder (you’ll get your normal system dialog box to choose).

Important note: in either case, the processed files will be placed in a subfolder under the chosen folder – and the subfolder will be named according to the file type you are saving (JPG, PSD, TIF).

Part 3 – File Type

Here is where the real work gets done in this dialog box.

First of all, there are three sections you can choose to select to save JPEG, PSD or TIFF. You can select any or all of these file types, and image processor will allow you to create these. As mentioned in the previous section, each file type will be saved into its own subfolder named for the file type (i.e. JPG).

For each file type, you can elect to resize the image, constraining the size within the width and height specified. Note that your image will not be stretch or squeezed; it will be resized with constrained proportions so that the maximum size falls within the limits you enter.

Finally, there are options specific to each file type:

• JPG – Select the compression Quality from 1 to 12; you can (and normally should) select to Convert Profile to sRGB, especially if you plan to post the images on the web.
• PSD – Maximize compatibility saves a flattened version of the file within the image for increased compatibility with other programs such as Lightroom.
• TIFF – LZW Compression will save in a compressed TIFF format, if you so desire.

Part 4 – Preferences

This part is strangely named, but it will allow you to do a few useful things:

• Run Action – will allow you to select an action to be run after the image is processed and before saving. Be careful, as this action will be run against all selected file types, so make sure you intend for this to be the case.
• Copyright Info – will embed the text into the image metadata under the Copyright tag.
• Include ICC Profile – embeds the color profile in with the saved image. Use with care for JPGs where it may not be needed and will add size to the files.

Once you’ve entered this all in, you do have a chance to save these options to be used again in the future. Select Save… from the dialog box to save settings, and choose Load… to reload them again on a subsequent run.

If you use this tool often, and frequently load in the same parameters for file types, sizes, and preferences, this can save loads of time in setting up the processor .

Once you’ve got everything set, choose Run.

At this point, depending on the number of files you are processing, and the number of output formats you’ve chosen, you may want to go get a cup of coffee. Photoshop will run and process the images according to the parameters you’ve entered:

Once Photoshop is finished, take a look at the output folder, and you’ll see the results nicely arranged in subfolders as we’ve reviewed above:

And there you have it – a lot of work done in the background, leaving you free to be productive while Photoshop does the dirty work.

Keep in mind, there are some things that Image Processor cannot do – maybe you’ve noticed:

• You cannot rename files as you are exporting
• You have no control over what to do if an output file already exists
• You don’t have control over the resampling method for resizing images
• Metadata control for output files is very limited
• Photoshop is used to run the processor and is tied up, only one processing job can be run at a time.

Next week, we’ll look at Bridge CS5’s new Export Panel, and we’ll see how we can use that new capability to address some of Image Processor’s shortcomings.

Image Processor, however, remains a very powerful and useful utility, one that you should have in your toolbox and use regularly. I encourage you to get out there and give it a try – don’t let the dialog box intimidate you, follow the steps outlined here and you’ll be converting and exporting images by the boatload in no time at all. Until next week, Happy Photoshopping!

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Here’s a great little technique that makes use of one of the best new features that Adobe added in Photoshop. It’s called mini bridge and as the name suggests it’s the little brother of the fully blown bridge that comes with Photoshop.

Now I’ve never really been a fan of the Bridge. In CS3 Bridge was slow and cumbersome and although it was improved greatly in Photoshop CS4 it was always a place I avoided visiting unless really necessary.

Mini bridge however is fast, compact and packs just enough power to make it an everyday, usable tool. Not only that but it has a neat little secret which is its ability to drop multiple images onto a document one at a time. That’s the feature that makes this technique possible.

Even if you don’t have Photoshop CS5 you can still create the same look cutting and pasting the individual photos one at a time on to the image.

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We will first create a metadata template containing the copyright information we need, then we will see how we can apply this template as part of the import process.

Creating the metadata template

For this process, I recommend starting in Photoshop CS5, with a new blank document (select File > New and accept the defaults). Once you have the new blank document opened in Photoshop, select the command File > File Info… to bring up the File Info dialog box:

All the fields are blank, since this is a new document, and this gives us a nice clean slate from which to create our copyright metadata template.

Let’s go ahead and populate the field for Author, change the Copyright Status field to “Copyrighted,” add a Copyright Notice, and insert the Copyright Info URL. Do not close the dialog box yet:

Next, we click on the tab for “IPTC,” and notice here that the Creator field is already populated with the value from the Author field we entered previously. Any other relevant information that you’d like applied to every image can be included here if desired. Do not close the dialog yet:

Now scroll all the way down in the IPTC tab, and at the bottom we can see that the Copyright Notice is also carried over from the first tab. In the next field down, we can enter the Rights Usage Terms. Do not close the dialog yet:

At this point, we have all the information we need for the basic template we will use going forward. We can save this as a template by looking to the bottom of the dialog box and finding the downward facing triangle next to “Untitled” (if you’ve created a template previously, you may see the name of your template instead of “Untitled”). Click the triangle to pull down the menu, and select Export…

In the save as dialog, we give the preset a name – I have chosen “c2010 MJH.xmp” – and click on Save.

Now, we can cancel out of the File Info dialog, and we can close the blank Photoshop document – we no longer need it. We now have a metadata template, let’s put it to use.

Applying the metadata template during image import

Now we will switch to Adobe Bridge CS5. Make sure your camera card is inserted, or your camera is connected, according to your usual preference, and select File > Get Photos From Camera…

Now, I’m going to recommend right off the bat, that we click the Advanced Dialog button, to get to the features we’ll need. Then, go ahead and select your camera or card from the Get Photos From: list:

Go ahead and make your selections for location to save, subfolder, and renaming, as desired. Note also the Advanced Options section, which we’ll cover in another tip. But, finally, direct your attention to the lower right corner, in the Apply Metadata section:

Notice the default is set up for us to use “Basic Metadata” and we can enter values for Creator and Copyright. However, we can take advantage of our metadata preset here. Just pull down the list for Template to Use: and you’ll find the metadata template we created previously:

Once we’ve selected the metadata template, the value fields disappear as they are no longer needed – the data is pre-recorded in our preset.

At this point we can go ahead and click on Get Photos and our photos will be imported – with all the metadata embedded automatically.

Note that the settings in this dialog are “sticky.” If you’re not changing this data all the time, once you set up this way, you can forget about it, as you won’t need to revise the values again – until next year. On the other hand, if you regularly need to use different data for different jobs or projects, consider creating multiple metadata templates and selecting the appropriate one on import – it’s just that easy.

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In this tip, we’ll take a look at Bridge CS5’s new Export Panel, and we’ll explore the mechanism for uploading images to Facebook, Flickr, and Photoshop.com.

Prerequisite: Adobe Bridge CS5 version 4.0.2 or later

To start with, check your Adobe Bridge CS5 version (click on Help > About Bridge…) and make sure you are using at least version 4.0.2.x – the earlier version that originally shipped with CS5 had an error in which the Export Panel was disabled. If you need to update, you can choose Help > Updates… from Bridge’s menu, or get the download directly from Adobe for Windows or Mac.

Using the Export Panel

Once you have verified you are running 4.0.2.x or later, go ahead and open the Export Panel. You can find this panel in the lower left of the Essentials workspace, or if it isn’t visible, choose Window > Export.

Your Export Panel should show four export modules – the basic building blocks for your export activity. As these are modular, it is entirely possible we will see more export modules become available in the future.

If you don’t see the four modules, click the flyout menu and choose “Manage Modules.”

Make sure all four are checked. If you don’t see the four listed, click the little gear, and from ITS flyout menu, choose “Check for Updates.” When you’re through, click the small “Done” button at the bottom to return to the Export Panel main window.

Configuring a Preset – the hard part

Well, not that hard, just a little tedious. You can start using the export modules directly, but every time you use them you’ll have to go through a long export process. Use presets to streamline this operation, by saving all the work for re-use. You can create multiple presets; for example, you might have several presets for Facebook depending on whether you want to send the images to your wall, or a specific album. We’ll step through the Facebook setup first.

In the Export Panel, highlight “Facebook” and click on the “+” icon at the bottom to Add a new Preset.

The “Add Preset” dialog appears, and the first thing you will need to do is authenticate with Facebook. Note that you will need to authenticate every time you create a new preset, even with the same service, but you won’t need to authenticate when you actually export your images. Click on “Sign In.”

Two things happen: Your browser will be launched, and you’ll see the authentication page from Facebook. You’ll need to enter your credentials, and you can check “Keep me logged in to Adobe Bridge Export Panel.”

Meanwhile, Bridge is waiting for this step to complete. Once you’ve logged in on Facebook, switch back to Bridge and click OK in the authorization dialog:

Now you can see the list of your existing Albums on Facebook. You can choose one of them or even create a new one with this dialog box. In this example, we’ll create a new album to upload some images from Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk.

In the New Photo Album dialog, we can name the Album, and enter some text for the location and the description of the album. Note that the description will appear on the Facebook album, as well as on the wall posting when you upload. Most importantly, you can set the Privacy here as well. Do you want the album visible to “Everyone,” “Friends of Friends,” or “Only Friends.” For Facebook, I choose “Only Friends.”

Now, make sure the new album is selected, and we move to the second screen in the Add Preset dialog – the Image Options:

Within the Image Options, the first section deals with Image size and quality. You can choose not to resize, or to manually resize. For Facebook, I typically resize my images to a maximum of 800 pixels on a side. Typical Photoshop resampling methods are available, use Bicubic Sharper for down sizing images. Set your image quality as desired.

Be sure to check the box “Always Render From Fullsize Image,” otherwise your image might be generated from a low res preview (why would anyone want that?).

Finally, we have the option to include metadata. You can choose to include everything, Copyright data only, Copyright & Contact Info only, or everything EXCEPT Camera and Camera Raw info.

You can apply a metadata template as well, which can either be appended or can overwrite (replace) data in the image.

And finally, you can even add keywords within the preset. Keep in mind, these keywords apply to every photo you will ever export to this album.

Last but not least, don’t forget to give your preset a name! Make it descriptive, as you will want to have several for each service.

After naming the preset, click “Save” and your preset should appear in the Export panel. Note that presets you create are listed in normal type, while the generic modules are listed in boldface. Here I have three Facebook presets listed, each associated with a different destination:

Exporting your images – the easy part!

Now for the exporting process. Once the preset is created, Exporting is really simple. Just highlight the images you want to export, and drag and drop them on the preset.

At this point, you’ll see a small triangle next to the preset icon, indicating there are images in the queue. Additionally, there is a new “X” icon (Clear the Queue) and an arrow icon (Begin the export job). Before starting the job, you are free to drag additional files. You can even drag files to more than one preset, then fire them all off simultaneously.

Once you’re ready to export to Facebook, simply click the arrow icon. The job will export, and a status window will pop up, showing the progress. If you start multiple export jobs, the status window will show the progress of each.

Once the export is complete, your photos are ready for viewing!

Exporting to Flickr and to Photoshop.com is just as easy. Spend a few minutes to set up your presets in advance, then just drag and drop to upload your photos with a single click from now on. It’s just that simple!

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For Web Contact Sheets, we begin as before, in Bridge CS5. Select the images you want to include in your gallery, and at the top of the Bridge window, select “Output” to switch to the Output Workspace. If “Output” isn’t visible, click the black triangle at the right of the list of workspaces to pull down the full list.

As with our previous exercise for Contact Sheets, the Output Workspace looks the same:

• The “Content” panel has moved to the bottom and has become a filmstrip.
• The “Preview” panel is now front and center, containing all the images you have currently selected.
• The “Output” panel now occupies the entire right side panel.

Now, to create our Web Contact Sheet, we again work down the right hand side, in the Output Panel, working from top to bottom. In the very top section, we see this:

We select “Web Gallery,” and for contact sheets, simply choose the Template called “HTML Gallery.”

At this point, it may help to go ahead and click on “Refresh Preview.” The Output Preview panel appears, and as you can see we are already 90% done (in this view, I’ve collapsed the left side panels to give us more room to see the gallery):

The rest is all about customization, and Bridge makes it quite easy to customize the template and preview changes. Let’s make this web gallery look more like a contact sheet. We’ll start with the Site Information section of the Output panel. We can make some changes, as shown:

Again, Bridge makes it relatively easy to see the changes, something you cannot do with the old plug-in. Click again on “Refresh Preview,” and the changes are updated:

The next section down the right panel is the Color Palette. For a contact sheet appearance, we might want to work with some more traditional white backgrounds and black text. Let’s make the changes shown below, for Text, Detail Text, and Cells:

Again, a quick “Refresh Preview” and we can see the changes (almost) immediately:

Next, we’ll work in the “Appearance” section. I don’t know about you, but the giant sequence numbers don’t work for me. We can deselect “Show Cell Numbers” to get rid of them. But, we can select “Filename” to add the file name as a caption – with or without the extension, as dictated by the next option. We’ll leave the extension off.

Further, in this section we can change the number of rows and columns (let’s go with 4 x 4 this time):

Once again, we can slick “Refresh Preview” to see our work in progress:

That’s looking pretty good, if we want to get an even better idea, we can look to the top of the Output Panel and click “Preview in Browser.”

Now that we’ve gotten our web contact sheet looking the way we want it, we can export it in one of two ways, using the final section of the Output Panel – we can save to disk in a given location, or upload directly to an FTP server:

To save to disk, fill out the Gallery Name (which is actually the name of the folder in which the gallery will be stored), pick a Save Location and then click “Save.” The full web gallery is then written out with all HTML and supporting files, ready for integration into another project or for uploading.

However, you can upload directly to your site, if you have an FTP account. Fill out the section for FTP server, User Name, Password, and Folder, and click “Upload.” Note that once you’ve entered your FTP information, you can click the “Save Preset Name” icon – allowing you to store multiple presets for multiple servers, or for multiple folders within a server.

Now that you’ve seen the CS5 method for creating contact sheets, web contact sheets, and picture packages, I hope you’ll be inspired to take the leap and move to the new technology. The old CS3 era plug-ins for contact sheet and picture package are on their last legs. Move to the modern technology, move to increased flexibility, and move to the future. You’ll wonder why you hadn’t made the move earlier.

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However, while these plug-ins are euphemistically called “optional,” the smart thinkers will be reading between the lines and considering them “on their way out.” What’s a hard working creative supposed to do for contact sheets? The functions have been moved and enhanced, but you have to know where to look. And, “where to look” is in the Output workspace of Bridge CS5 (CS4 works similarly, if you’re still using that version).

In this tip, we’ll look at the Contact Sheet feature. If you want to see the best way to produce a flexible Picture Package, look to my previous tip on the subject.

In Bridge, select the images you want to want to include in your contact sheet. Then, at the top of the Bridge window, select “Output” to change to the Output Workspace.

Once in the Output Workspace, note several changes that have occurred:

• The “Content” panel has moved to the bottom and has become a filmstrip.
• The “Preview” panel is now front and center, containing all the images you have currently selected.
• The “Output” panel now occupies the entire right side panel

With this, we have what we need to create a contact sheet. Let’s start at the top of the Output panel, and work our way down. At the top, we see this:

With this panel, we select whether we are going to direct our output to a PDF (for printing, email, etc) or to a web gallery. For now, we will pick “PDF” and then click the dropdown list to choose the template. We’ll pick “5*8 Contact Sheet,” but notice the other options available (and note that you can save your own as well):

Now that we’ve selected the 5×8 contact sheet, let’s go ahead and click the “Refresh Preview” button, which will give us our first output preview:

Once you click “Refresh Preview,” a NEW panel opens, called the “Output Preview” panel. Note that the original Preview panel is still there, but now there are two tabbed panels. Within the Output Preview panel, is a rendering of our PDF contact sheet, first try:

Clicking on the Output Preview zooms in, Alt/Option clicking zooms out. Looking at the right side panel, we have an accordion panel with all sorts of options for customization of this PDF. The options in a quick summary are:

• Document: Set your paper size, background color, and image quality. You can also set a password for security in opening the PDF.
• Layout: The parameters are set for our 5 x 8 thumbnails, but you can customize the number of rows and columns, margins and gutters, and set whether to auto rotate for best fit.
• Overlays: For our 5 x 8 preset, the overlays are configured to display the file name and file extension. You can control the text font and color, and you can add page numbering as well.
• Header and Footer: allow you to add text per page, with options for text font, size and color.
• Playback: In the section, you can choose to create a PDF that will open in full screen, and can play as a slideshow (not particularly useful for contact sheets).
• Watermark: You can add a text or graphical watermark to appear on each image.

As you make changes, you can click the “Refresh Preview” button to see the results. Once you’ve set the options to taste, you can save the preset (as we mentioned above) by clicking the icon next to the preset name:

After you’ve created the settings you desire, simply click “Save…” at the bottom of the panel and you’ll be prompted to name your file and choose the location to save it. You can also check the box at the bottom to “View PDF After Save.” Once you’ve saved out the PDF, you can distribute it as desired:

The Bridge Output workspace is where all the heavy output lifting gets done in Creative Suite 4 and 5. Get to know this panel, as you can bet that Adobe will continue to add new features and functions here in the future. Next time here on TipSquirrel, we’ll look at creating a Web Contact Sheet, and after that, you’ll never fret over the old “optional” plug-ins again.

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Lightroom users, this applies to you, too. Read on and we’ll cover how to employ this is a Lightroom workflow, too.

Let’s see how this works. We’ll start in the Photoshop CS5 editor, in the mini-Bridge (if you have an earlier version of Photoshop, start with the regular Bridge window). Double click on the thumbnail of the raw file you want to open:

The file, being recognized as a Camera Raw file, opens into Photoshop and the Adobe Camera Raw dialog box is displayed. At this point, you can make any Camera Raw adjustments you please:

Now, you might be tempted to go ahead and click on “Open Image,” but let’s not get hasty! Hover your cursor over the “Open Image” button, and we get a tooltip with alternate instructions. Pressing the Shift Key, it says, will open as a Smart Object:

Note that when you hold the shift key down, the button legend changes to “Open Object.” Go ahead and choose this option:

In a few moments, we are in the Photoshop editor. Notice the Layers Panel – instead of a “Background” pixel layer, we have a layer named after our file, with the telltale “package” icon, indicating a Smart Object. Hovering our cursor over the thumbnail confirms this:

So, what does that buy us? Incredible power, as we’ll see in the next few lessons! For now, let’s try something simple: Double click the layer icon, and notice that you end up back in the Adobe Camera Raw dialog box… with all the earlier adjustments still intact! We can tweak any of the settings, even update the image crop size:

Now, notice the button at the bottom is labeled “OK,” You don’t have a choice this time. Go ahead and click it, and you’ll see the status dialog indicating the smart object is being updated. Then, we find ourselves back in the Photoshop editor. Note that changing the crop size of the Smart Object doesn’t change the PSD document size! We can simply use Edit > Trim… and leave the default settings as shown:

And now our image is ready for further creative work:

Are you a Lightroom user? No problem! This power is available to you, too. From within Lightroom, in the Library module, right-click (Mac: command-click) the image you want to open, choose “Edit In >” and notice the menu. Don’t choose “Edit in Photoshop CS5…” (or CS4, or CS3). Instead, look a little further down, and you’ll find “Open as Smart Object in Photoshop…”

Select that and we’re off to the Smart Object races, just as in the example above.

Stick around next week for more Smart Object goodness, as we explore the question, “When is a copy not a copy?” In the meantime, get out there and start experimenting with Smart Objects!

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