Just got CS2

[engstrom]

Well I just bought the upgrade to Photoshop CS2! Last night a took a series of pictures specifically with HDR in mind so I had to go out and buy the upgrade.

Anyone have any tips on the best way to use Bridge and the new ACR?

[Hogleg 44]

I just use Bridge as a browser to find the folder of pics I want to work on. But I've seen posts elsewhere that it does a lot more than that. Organizing perhaps???
I got the idea somewhere that Bridge was more for bridging between the various programs if you had the Adobe Suite. I only have CS2.
My main objection to Bridge is that it is so slooow!

[shutterflypro]

Bridge does a whole lot more than just act as another picture explorer. One of the reasons it seems to be slow is all of the processing that it is doing. Its scoring system is worth its weight in gold.

[engstrom]

Thanks for the replies - I'm impressed with what I've seen so far from Bridge. It's head and shoulders above the CS File Browser and I haven't even scratched the surface of its capabilities.

[Sonny]

Where can we find more information about what Bridge does?

[engstrom]

korrupt, I'm sure that Bruce Fraser covers Bridge very well in his Real World Adobe Camera RAW for CS2. I have the CS version of that book and he does an excellent job explaining how to use the File Browser which was the predecessor to Bridge.

[shutterflypro]

I will also be covering this in the class tomarrow night.

[Collins]

Originally Posted by engstrom

Anyone have any tips on the best way to use Bridge and the new ACR?

With plenty of RAM!!

[cmalana]

I use it to screen my photos and start rating them (1-5 star rating). It allows me to quickly review RAW files and make decisions after initial download, which are keepers, and which are maybes (1 and 2 stars).

You can also batch tag stuff with captions/descriptions/copyright info/keywords, etc.

As I start getting more and more pictures in my collection, I'm trying to be better organized and I think Bridge can help there.

[Gordon]

Happened to be exploring this yesterday. Bridge is my new best friend for image sorting/ editing etc. Looks like I can process 90% of the images I want without ever opening CS2 now that the raw converter can run in Bridge, handle multiple files and do cropping.

For tips on using bridge and CS2 features, the videos at Dr. Brown's site are really useful,
in particular:

CS2 Bridge Workflow
&
CS2 Camera RAW

The way of initially rating everything as a 2 *s, and showing 2 or more stars only, then rating
things as a '1' to clear them from the screen is really powerful, meaning you don't delete anything by mistake in the first pass.

Also, in the settings you can change the rating hot keys to not need you to press Ctrl/Cmd+number, and just press number. This means I can rate really quickly, just
hitting a number from 1-5, hit 1 and the pic vanishes, anything higher and its rated
higher.

Also like the fact that you can build the cache/ previews out of Photoshop, so you can
keep working with it in the background.

Based on what I've seen so far I think I'll be paying for the upgade to CS2 fairly soon.
The RAW converter is vastly improved (Kelvin scale goes in the right direction, cropping,
curves/ tonal adjustments in the converter, horizon straightening etc). The healing
tools work well, the improved layer handling is good too.

(This is all on a machine with 2Gb RAM, and a 2.8GHz processor and a 300Gb disk,
so YMMV)

[zeroendless]

Anyone with cs2 user use the smart sharpening tool? Try the advanced mode with shadow/Highlight feature... it'll eat ya cpu alive.

Don't try it if you have slow pc/mac, it'll choke even in preview.

[edit: i meant if you editing high res image]

[saroy]

Does anybody else find that Bridge is next to impossible to use?? It's SOOOOOOOO slow. And I'm on a brand new mid-level laptop as well. What gives??

[Gordon]

Originally Posted by saroy

Does anybody else find that Bridge is next to impossible to use?? It's SOOOOOOOO slow. And I'm on a brand new mid-level laptop as well. What gives??

Really fast for me (working with 1DMkII RAW files)
The trick is to build the cache and export it first. That takes time, but afterwards it is fast.
It does require quite a bit of memory though.