Captain, Please Report to the Bridge

Ben Long

Return to Review: Adobe Photoshop CS3.
Bridge, a file browser and manager that Adobe introduced with Creative Suite 2, has also been updated. The new version sports a modified look, with a dark gray background (Figure 1). In Bridge’s Preferences, you can now change the brightness of the interface and the color of certain elements, allowing you to build an environment that’s comfortable for viewing.

Figure 1. Bridge’s interface remains largely unchanged, though you’ll see a few tweaks and retoolings. Click on the image for a larger version.
Bridge CS2 provided buttons at the bottom of the window for changing layouts; CS3 has a more customizable option. Instead of preset buttons, there are now three layout buttons that you can easily configure to house any particular layout. It’s a great improvement.
The Bridge CS3 metadata pane is now much easier to use thanks to design changes and a really cool readout that looks like the status display on a camera (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Bridge’s new Metadata panel has a cool new EXIF reader that resembles a camera’s status display.
In Bridge CS2, when you opened a folder full of thumbnails, Bridge went to great effort to generate its own previews of the images, rather than displaying the low-res preview thumbnails included in files. With CS3, you now have the option of displaying the included low-res thumbnail (the default behavior), high-quality Bridge-generated thumbnails, or high-quality thumbnails any time you click on an image. This simple change can make Bridge feel much peppier on slower machines.
Adobe made significant enhancements to the Preview pane in Bridge. As in Aperture and Lightroom, you can now view images side by side in Bridge by simply selecting multiple images in the thumbnail filmstrip. A new Loupe tool lets you mouse over the currently selected image to view a 100% view, for checking details and sharpness.
Pulling another page from Aperture, Bridge now provides a Stacking feature that lets you group images together into a stack of related images. Unlike Aperture and Lightroom, Bridge’s Stack feature doesn’t have compare modes or features. Still, it’s a welcome, handy addition.
The new features make the upgrade very worthwhile, and experienced Bridge users won’t have any trouble making the switch to the new version. Intel Mac users who’ve had trouble getting Bridge CS2 to work at all will be glad simply to have a stable version.