Adobe Bridge was installed by default when I installed Adobe CS5. What is Adobe Bridge used for, and how can it be integrated within a designer's workflow?
What I know about it is that it is basically a file manager, which is somewhat redundant to me because Finder or Windows Explorer can be used to manage my files.
Answer
I use it for browsing a huge amount of images in one spot very quickly.
Example: I have a new brochure I'm designing for a steady client, the Smith Company. The client says "I want to use the headshot with the two founders in it. Not the old guy, the younger one — his son. And the guy he works with. The son is on the left. And no background. I want it siloed." (silhouetted)
The client doesn't know that when we got that color photo over two years ago, we cleaned it up, made a copy in grayscale, a copy in duotone, did clipping paths for each, made a version that's a cameo with a nice gradient fade, and flipped a copy. That's not including all the other headshots we've gotten from them in the last five years, with different people in different combinations. There are like 200 images in that folder.
So I open my SMITHCO-HEADSHOT folder in Bridge, and it takes me about 15 seconds of scrolling to find the shot the client needs. I make note of the file name, drop it in, and go on with my day.
The nice thing about Bridge is that is also does EPS files, which Mac Finder's Cover Flow does NOT do. So if I need a chart with two lines and one set of bars, with the axis for the bar chart on the right, and I have 200 charts in that folder, I can use Bridge to zip through all the charts quickly rather than opening up 200 files.
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