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Mini Bridge Panel
As its name implies, Mini Bridge is a miniature version of Bridge that has a subset of Bridge features. Unlike Bridge, Mini Bridge is available right inside Photoshop as a panel.
Opening Mini Bridge
The Mini Bridge panel can be opened in a number of ways.
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Go to File > Browse in Mini Bridge...
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Click the Mini Bridge icon in the Application bar.
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Click on the Mini Bridge icon in the icon dock.
Home Page
This is the Mini Bridge Home page. There are a number of icons along the top row including the Home page (house) icon. This icon is displayed everywhere within Mini Bridge so you can always return to the Home page by clicking it.
Below the row of icons is a welcome message and the Browse Files button. This will open the area for navigating folders, viewing file thumbnails and previews, etc.
The bottom section of the Home page displays a Settings button. We'll look at the settings later on. Now, we'll click on the Browse Files button to view the Browse panel.
Browse Panel
You see three familiar panes (which Adobe calls "pods" in Mini Bridge) - Navigation, Preview, and Content - all in miniature form. If you find the panel too small, you can make it larger by holding your cursor over the left or bottom edge of the panel until a double-headed arrow appears and drag to widen or lengthen the panel. The numbered items below correspond to the numbered areas in the image.
- Path Bar: This displays the path to the image you have selected in the Content pod. You can click on folders along the path to switch to those folders.The downward triangle opens a menu of your recently visited folders.
- Navigation Pod: This works the same as in Bridge. It has Favourites and Folders panes you can use to navigate to files.
- Preview Pod: Here you can preview your selected image(s).
- Content Pod: This displays the files and folders within the current folder. Along the top of the pod, there are options for sorting and filtering files.
- Content Pod display settings: This contains the same viewing options as Bridge but in a more compact fashion.
Icon Row
Let's start at the top and identify the icons.
- Go Back/Forward
- As you navigate through folders, use these arrow buttons go back or forward along the route you took. They also let you go back or forward between the different pages you've viewed in Mini Bridge.
- Go to Parent, Recent Items or Favourites
- Clicking this button will open a menu listing the names of the folders in the current path, recent files, and favourites.
- Home
- Return to the Mini Bridge Home page.
- Go to Bridge
- Switch to the Adobe Bridge application.
- Panel View Options
- Clicking this button will open a menu letting you hide or show screen elements.
- Search
- Performs a simple file search. More sophisticated search options are available in Bridge.
Panel View Options
As just mentioned, the Panel View button lets you hide or show screen elements. More specifically, you can toggle the display of the Path Bar, the Navigation Pod and the Preview Pod. An unchecked menu item means the element is currently hidden. Clicking on an item will display the element and it will have a check mark beside it the next time you open the menu.
You may have noticed a white X icon on both the Navigation and Preview Pods. These are the Close buttons for the pods. They are shown here circled in red. Instead of using the Panel View button to hide one or both of these, you can just click the Close button(s).
When you hide the Path Bar and the two pods, you're left with the view at the right.
Content Viewing Options
- Select
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The Select menu provides options for determining how files and folders will be displayed in the Content Pod and provides selection commands.
- Refresh
- The Refresh command will update the display to include any new files or folders. Although not shown on the menu, the shortcut for refreshing is F5.
- Show Reject Files
- If you have marked any files as rejected, they won't be displayed with this option enabled.
- Show Hidden Files
- This will display files that are normally hidden such as system files.
- Show Folders
- Show or hide folders by toggling this option.
- Select All
- This command selects all the files and folders within the current folder.
- Deselect All
- All selected files and folders will be deselected with this command.
- Invert Selection
- Say, for example, you have Cat.psd selected. After using the Invert Selection command, every other file and folder will become selected and Cat.psd will be deselected.
- Filter
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The Filter menu allows you to display a subset of the current folder's files based on ratings and labels you've applied. When the Clear Filter command is checked, no filters are currently enabled. You can use this to disable any active filters. Keep filter when browsing will allow you to lock in your current filter(s) and apply them to other folders as you browse.
- Sort
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This works the same as in Bridge but the sort criteria and the ascending/descending option are combined in one menu.
- Tools
- This menu lets you choose what action to take with the currently selected file(s).
- Place
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This is different from just opening a file in Photoshop. Placing a file will bring the file into Photoshop and place it on a "smart layer". This will be covered later in the course.
- Photoshop
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Load Files into Photoshop Layers is a useful option. When you have multiple files selected, this command will insert all the files into a single document with each file in its own layer.
The example shown here is the result of using the Load Files into Photoshop Layers command when the cat and CD images were selected in Mini Bridge. Each layer was automatically named with the file name of the image.
Content Display Controls
The controls for selecting display options are shown at the right. The Thumbnail slider, Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons are the same as those found in Bridge. The Preview button is a shortcut for a command found in the Preview menu so we'll jump straight to the menu commands.
- Preview Menu
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This menu gives you options for previewing all of the folder images as well as individual images in larger sizes.
- Slideshow
- View images as a slide show and customize it using the Set Slideshow Options in Bridge... command.
- Review Mode
- This command opens a full-screen black window with navigation controls for viewing the folder images. If you look at the Review Mode icon in the menu, this is how the images will display. They'll rotate in a circular fashion with the front image displayed the largest.
- Full Screen Preview
- This will open up an image on a full screen displayed against a dark grey background. The handy shortcut for this command is the space bar. Pressing the space bar a second time will close the window.
- Preview
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This option temporarily replaces the Content Pod with a special Preview Pod, displaying the selected image as large as the Mini Bridge will allow. The icon bar, Navigation Pod, the regular Preview Pod, and the bottom status bar will appear slightly blurred while the preview is being shown. The Preview keyboard shortcut is Shift-space bar. Also, the Preview button to the left of menu performs the same function. To close the preview, click on the transparent Close button at the bottom right of the preview image.
- View Menu
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Most of the commands in the View menu are the same options used in Bridge. We'll skip those that are.
- Show Thumbnail Only
- This will hide the file names so only the image thumbnails are displayed in the Content Pod.
- Grid Lock
- This is the same as the Bridge's Lock Thumbnail Grid option.
- Show Items in Pages
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This option divides up the thumbnails over separate pages so they can be shown at a larger size than the standard thumbnail. You can navigate backwards and forwards through the pages by using the left and right arrow buttons.
Opening Files
In addition to the options available in the Tools menu mentioned earlier, there are other ways to open a file in Photoshop from the Mini Bridge panel.
- Drag a thumbnail from the Content Pod into Photoshop. (On the Mac, you'll need to have the Application Frame displayed; otherwise, your image will end up on the desktop.)
- Drag a thumbnail and drop it on the Photoshop application icon.
- Right-click (Ctrl-click) on a thumbnail and select Open Image from the context menu or double-click on the thumbnail. This will only open the file in Photoshop if the file format is set to open by default in Photoshop.
Renaming Files
This works exactly the same way as in Bridge. You can either click on the file name for a selected thumbnail to edit the name or right-click (Ctrl-click) on the image and choose Rename from the context menu.
Settings
The view shown here is the main Settings page which is accessed from the Home page. Settings are synonymous with Preferences. There are two categories of settings:
- Bridge Launching
- Appearance
The Reset Preferences button at the bottom of the panel will restore the settings to their default state.
Bridge Launching Settings
Clicking on the Bridge Launching link on the main settings page will open up the Bridge Launching settings shown here. The first section informs you that Bridge must be running in order to use Mini Bridge. Bridge provides the functionality in the background for Mini Bridge. It also says that if Bridge is currently running, Mini Bridge will begin browsing in the last location.
- If Bridge is not running
- This option lets you decide what will happen when you open the Mini Bridge panel. You can have Bridge launch automatically if it's not already running or you can set it to only launch Bridge after you click the Browse Files button on the Home page.
- When Mini Bridge opens Bridge
- This option lets you determine whether clicking on the Go to Bridge button at the top of the panel will switch to the existing Bridge window or open up a second Bridge window.
From the Bridge Launching Settings page, you can return to the main Settings page by clicking the down arrow beside the Launching Settings button and select Settings from the menu.
Appearance Settings
Once you return to the main Settings page, you can then click on the Appearance button to display the Appearance page, shown here. This page has three options:
- User Interface Brightness
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In the example shown at the right, the User Interface Brightness slider has been dragged to the right to darken the interface.
- Image Backdrop
- This slider sets the background colour behind the thumbnails in the Content Pod. The choices are all greyscale: from white to black.
- Colour Manage Panel
- This option enables your monitor's colour profile to be applied to image thumbnails and previews in the Content Pod.
To switch to the Browse panel from any of the settings pages, just click on the Browse Files button.
Mini Bridge Panel Summary
- Mini Bridge is a Photoshop panel that is an extension of Bridge.
- The Bridge application must be running to enable Mini Bridge's Browse function.
- The main display areas are called "pods" and they can be toggled on and off using the Panel View options.
- The Select menu provides options for refreshing the Content Pod, showing or hiding certain files or folders, and selection options.
- The Filter menu allows you to filter by ratings and labels.
- The Sort menu lets you sort files and folders according to various criteria and put them in ascending or descending order.
- The Tools menu provides a number of options for opening or processing images.
- The Preview menu has preview options such as a slideshow, a full-screen option, etc.
- The View menu lets you choose how to display images and their associated file information in the Content Pod.
- Files can be renamed in Mini Bridge and opened in Photoshop.
- The Mini Bridge settings or preferences include some appearance options as well as when and how Bridge will launch.
Mini Bridge Panel Keyboard Shortcuts:
- Refresh Content Pod: F5
- Full Screen Preview (open and close): space bar
- Preview: Shift-space bar
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