How to Use Adobe Bridge

Adobe Bridge is a file opening wizard created for use with Adobe creative products like Premiere, Illustrator and Photoshop. Unlike the simple text-named files displayed when you use the “Open” feature in Adobe programs, Adobe Bridge provides thumbnails of image and video files and a preview pane where you can view those files before opening them. The Bridge opening system can help you find files more easily by giving you a visual reference for the file. Also, you can edit photos using Bridge without using Photoshop.

  1. Open the “File” menu and choose “Bridge” or “Browse in Bridge” from the menu options in Photoshop or another Adobe program. Adobe Bridge opens in the Adobe application window. Or, you can open the Bridge application by itself.
  2. Step 2

    Switch between views in Adobe Bridge by clicking the “Essentials,” “Film Strip” or “Metadata” on the view bar. Each viewing option offers a different way of displaying the files in Adobe Bridge, but “Essentials” works well for most purposes.

  3. Step 3

    Navigate through the drives that are connected to your computer, including the computer’s main hard drive and external drives, by clicking on any of the drives listed in the “Folders” pane of Adobe Bridge. Once you select a drive, you can go to any folder on that drive. Any media files contained in the folder you have highlighted that are compatible with Adobe programs will display in the “Content” pane.

  4. Step 4

    Click on any file in the “Content” pane and the media file displays in the “Preview” pane. This makes it easy to see the differences between small and similar photos before opening them up in the main application window.

  5. Step 5

    Double-click the name of the file when you find a file that you want to open. Just like with the standard “Open” feature in Adobe creative programs, the file opens in the main window of the Adobe application.

  6. Step 6

    Edit photo files on the fly using Adobe Bridge. Right-click a photo and select “Open in Camera Raw” from the drop-down menu. An edit pane will appear. Basic Photoshop functions like sharpening and color adjusting are available.