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I've seen a couple of negative comments about this new addition that comes with the CS2 version of Photoshop and the full Creative Suite...

While I would agree that Bridge runs a little slower than it probably should, there are some ways that you can improve this and despite the slight performance issues I am really enjoying the new functionality that it introduces...

I bought the full Creative Suite 2 on Sunday and so far haven't ventured much beyond exploring Bridge and Camera Raw...

In my view Bridge provides functionality that replaces / improves on other packages that I currently use and goes a long way towards satisfying all my workflow / cataloguing needs. From my experience so far, it provides much the same workflow facilities as Rawshooter (apart from the background JPG conversion) and also provides cataloguing and search facilities that match / exceed Photo Album, Iview Media Pro or Picassa...

For those who are interested, here's a brief summary of what I've found it can do and why I am growing to like it a lot...

Basic Workflow:
1. You can setup favourite folders in Bridge. One of these can be the drive that represents your CF card reader. Another can be the folder where you keep your photos on the HD. Bridge allows full folder and file manipulation and allows you therefore to copy / move the NEFs from the CF card to the HD. This is an improvement on having to skip between Nikon View and Explorer and is much the same functionality as that provided by Rawshooter.
2. Having moved the NEFs to your HD, you can display the photos in a contact sheet form (with fully customisable thumbnail size / background color) or can view them in the form of a full-screen slideshow, which again can be customised.. During the slideshow, you can quickly rank your pictures from 1-5, or can delete the real duffers immediately.
3. On exiting the slideshow, you return to the contact sheet format and can then sort the pictures on their ranking, or can even filter on the ranking so that you only see the ones you want.
4. You can then perform your post-processing and have the option of opening one or more photos in either Camera Raw or the full blown Photoshop (with Camera Raw front-end).
5. You can perform batch conversion to JPGs within Bridge and can also do batch resizing /rotation. You can also trigger an automated batch session within Photoshop.

Cataloguing and Search facilities:
1. Bridge allows you to edit the IPTC and other tags on the image, thereby allowing you to enter general and location information
2. It allows you define categories and keywords and to assign these keywords to individual or groups of pictures... I use this to identify pictures that contain particular family members or those that relate to particular events.
3. The search facilities allow you to search all of your images on almost any EXIF or IPTC tag available in the image... e.g. you could search on lens, ISO, camera, or on city, state, genre

Speed Tip:
If you do use Bridge you may find it a bit slow initially as it takes some time to generate high resolution thumbnails rather than use the embedded thumbnails... It doesn't handle this as fluidly as say Rawshooter, so it can appear that the package reacts slowly to anything you do... One way of reducing the effect of this is to generate the thumbnail cache for all of your photos... This is done on the Tools-->Cache-->Build Cache for Sub-folders menu

I intend to persevere with Bridge to see if I can centre my whole workflow around it... If so, I can probably eliminate the need for Nikon View, Nikon Editor, Rawshooter, IView Media Pro and most of the other bits and bobs that I use for various functions...

Thanks John,

An interesting perspective. I haven't grabed a trial version yet, and I will be keen to test and experiment with what you have suggested.

Cheers,

I'll certainly have to try those suggestions when i get home, pretty keen to get Bridge working nicely

Chris

I'll try them later on, but in my dealings with Bridge so far, I have to say that it's one of the most poorly coded pieces of trash that I've seen a company that isn't Microsoft produce in a while.

Nnnnsic wrote:I'll try them later on, but in my dealings with Bridge so far, I have to say that it's one of the most poorly coded pieces of trash that I've seen a company that isn't Microsoft produce in a while.

Poorly coded in what way Leigh???

If you mean it's inefficient / slow, yes I'd agree...
However, I think that the new functionality makes up for it...

Bridge? After using the browser in PS7 and CS, I really do not like the thing because it does not stay put in the PS window. My only other gripe would be its memory usage, which btw is no worse than the browsers before it, but 70MB... oh please!

Cheers

Matt

At first I did not like it because it was slow. But now it flys - and it is more functional than the original browser. PSCS2 is certainly faster than CS and is a Mercedes SL500 compared to NC.