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James Buck

Profile: Adobe Bridge CS4 | Software | Macworld - 0 views

www.macworld.com/...bridgecs4.html

media management photo archive software bridge

shared by James Buck on 25 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Adobe Bridge is an organizational and image-browsing powerhouse that’s been shipping with Photoshop since the inception of the creative suite. However, in previous versions it was sometimes painfully slow and the workspace wasn’t friendly as it could have been. That’s all changed in Photoshop CS4 ()—Bridge got a makeover, a speed boost, and a new Review Mode that’ll make photographers squeal with joy.
  • ou can navigate through your hard drive and view files as scalable thumbnails. To see larger previews, click an image and it’ll appear in the Preview panel (or just press your keyboard’s spacebar for a full-screen preview). At the top of the window lie several new navigational aids including Forward and Back arrow buttons
  • Using Bridge to import your photos (done seamlessly via a separate app called Adobe Photo Downloader) can be a huge timesaver as you can make it do all kinds of housekeeping chores for you. For example, you can set it up to automatically rename your photos, add keywords, a description, and copyright info to each and every one. It can perform a backup as part of the import process and burn a DVD for off-site storage. This valuable function of Bridge has been carried over from the previous version.
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  • Path Bar, which serves as a clickable trail of breadcrumbs that keeps you spatially oriented within your file system
  • Among other improvements are a new Collections pane, which, expanding on the existing collections feature, gives you the ability to group your images into virtual albums. You can build Collections manually or have Bridge do it for you by selecting certain criteria like star-rating, name, keywords, and so on. These Smart Collections will grow over time as new photos with matching criteria are added to the collection automatically. They take Bridge beyond being a mere browser, by giving it some powerful library functionality.
  • Bridge gives you a lot of flexibility when it comes to viewing your image collection. For example, you can use the Sort menu at the top of the window to arrange your images by name, date modified, size, and so on.
  • The Filter panel, on the other hand, lets you weed out images by displaying those that match a certain criteria, like star-rating, rejections, and so on
  • After importing your images, the new Review Mode lets you see them in a giant, floating carousel. It’s a quick and easy way to view your images full-screen, mark rejections, and apply a handy star-rating system.
  • Bridge can also create an instant slideshow of your work, and generate PDFs or a Web gallery.
  • The galactic bummer is that you can’t save any of the options you’ve painstakingly entered—though it does remember the last settings you used.
  • With the workspace overhaul and speed increase, Bridge is a real joy to use. The ability to quickly zip through the images on your hard drive is very satisfying, especially for those who have a lot of imagery in their lives.
  • inability to save your settings as a preset is bone-jarring.
  • After all, the module feels air-lifted right out of Adobe Lightroom where the ability to save presets does exist.
  • For those mourning the loss of Contact Sheets and Picture Packages over in Photoshop CS4, a little customization in the Output module would have been placating
James Buck

Microsoft Expression Media 1.0 Review | Photography | Macworld - 0 views

www.macworld.com/...expressionmedia.html

media management photo archive software review

shared by James Buck on 25 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Expression Media is quite different from Aperture, Lightroom, and iPhoto (). Where those products combine image management and image editing, Expression Media focuses mostly on media management. It does a good job of managing your images, but it can also track movies, audio files, text and HTML files, fonts, and PDFs, as well as documents created with Microsoft Office, Adobe's Creative Suite applications, and QuarkXPress (
  • . (It does have some limited image editing functionality, but it really can't do much more than simple tonal correction, red-eye reduction, and cropping.)
  • The heart of Expression Media is the catalog. Each catalog is a visual database that contains information and thumbnail images of the files that it tracks. The program doesn't store your files in the catalog,
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  • One of Expression Media's strengths is its speed. Since it doesn't render images at full size like Aperture and Lightroom do, you can zip through a catalog quickly, rating images, comparing them, adding keywords, and more
  • You can't create Flash-based sites as you can with Lightroom,
  • At $299, Expression Media's biggest limitation is its price. Lightroom, at $299, and Aperture, which is now $199, include image editing and image management capabilities. With Expression Media, if you're just getting started, you'll also still need to invest in an image editor like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, which adds significantly to the cost of your image management system.
  • If you already have an editor, and want more than what Adobe Bridge provides, Expression Media is good, but we think more people will still go for a program like Lightroom or Aperture, or even iPhoto, just to get more expansive editing capabilities. However, if you prefer to maintain your own system for tracking, managing, and archiving images--and other kinds of media--Expression Media is a solid and easy-to-use program with some great file-management capabilities.
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