Mini Bridge In Photoshop CS5

Customizing Mini Bridge

By default, the Content Pod is a little too small to be of much use, but there's some easy ways to customize the look of Mini Bridge and make it more useful. First, we can expand the size of the panel by clicking on any of its borders and dragging them outward. I'll drag out the left and bottom of Mini Bridge to make the panel larger. As the panel expands, so does the Content Pod, allowing us to see more of our images:




Click and drag out any of the borders to make the Mini Bridge panel larger.
We can also drag the dividing bar between the pods to change the amount of space that each pod is given inside the Mini Bridge panel. I'll click on the bar between the Navigation and Content Pods and drag it upward to give more room to the Content Pod:



Dragging the divider bar gives more room to the Content Pod and less to the Navigation Pod.
The thumbnails are also a little too small to work with, but we can increase their size by dragging the thumbnail slider along the bottom of the Mini Bridge panel. The further you drag the slider towards the right, the larger the thumbnails appear:



Change the size of the image thumbnails using the slider below the Content Pod.
Notice how, after increasing their size, the thumbnails in the bottom row are now too large to fit entirely within the Content Pod? If that bothers you, click on the View icon in the bottom right corner of Mini Bridge and select Grid Lock from the menu:



Selecting Grid Lock from the View menu in the bottom right corner of Mini Bridge.
This places the thumbnails inside a grid that limits their size so that as you drag the slider, the thumbnails will jump to the next available size that still allows them to fit entirely within the Content Pod rather than being partially cut off. To switch back to the normal view, click again on the View icon and then on Grid Lock to deselect it:



The size of the thumbnails is now limited by the grid.
By default, we scroll through the thumbnails in the Content Pod to view them all, but Mini Bridge also lets us view them as pages. Click again on the View icon in the bottom right corner and select Show Items in Pages from the top of the menu:



Click on the View icon and select Show Items in Pages.
Now, rather than having the thumbnails appear as a long list to scroll through, they appear as a collection of pages that we can easily move forward and back through by clicking on the left and right arrows in the bottom right corner of the Content Pod. The number of pages will depend on how many images are in the folder and the size of the thumbnails. To switch back to the scrollable thumbnail list, click again on the View menu and then on Show Items in Pages to deselect it:



Use the Forward and Back icons to move back and forth through the thumbnail pages.
To make even more room for the thumbnails, you can turn off their file names and other information and display only the thumbnails themselves by selecting Show Thumbnail Only from the View menu:



Click on the View icon and select Show Thumbnail Only.
Now, only the thumbnails appear in the Content Pod. To display the file names and other information again, click back on the View icon and deselect Show Thumbnail Only:



Only the thumbnails themselves now appear.

The full version of Adobe Bridge gives us four different layouts for how the thumbnails appear in the Content Panel and what information is displayed along with them, and Mini Bridge gives us access to these exact same layouts for the Content Pod. If we click again on the View icon, we see the four layouts listed at the bottom of the menu - As Thumbnails, As Filmstrip, As Details, and As List. The default layout is As Thumbnails, which is what we've seen so far, but I'll click on As Filmstrip to select it:



Four different layouts for the Content Pod are available from the View menu.
In the Filmstrip layout, the thumbnails appear in a single horizontal row that we can scroll through using the slider bar below them:



Filmstrip mode lets us scroll horizontally through the thumbnails like a filmstrip.
The As Details layout will display the thumbnails along with lots of information about them, like the date they were taken, the file size, file type, and so on. The As List layout will display them as a simple list, similar to how they would appear if you were viewing the contents of the folder with your computer's operating system. I'll switch back to the As Thumbnails layout.

Directly to the left of the View icon is the Preview icon. Click on a thumbnail that you want to see a larger preview of, then click on the Preview icon:



Select a thumbnail to preview, then click on the Preview icon.
You can also access the Preview command by pressing Shift+Spacebar if you prefer keyboard shortcuts. Either way, the Content Pod will temporarily be replaced with a larger version of the image, filling up as much of the space as possible. Click the Close button in the bottom right corner to close the preview and switch back to the normal Content Pod view:



In Preview mode, the selected image expands to fill the Content area.
Clicking on the small arrow to the right of the Preview icon will open a menu with additional options for previewing images (Slideshow, Review Mode and Full Screen Preview), all of which are brought over from the full version of Adobe Bridge. Click on any of them in the list to select them, or click anywhere outside of the menu to close it:



Mini Bridge also shares the same preview options as the full Adobe Bridge.

In the top right corner of the Content Pod are some options for selecting, filtering, and sorting the images. Starting from left to right, the Select icon gives us standard options for selecting and deselecting images and for showing or hiding certain files:



Use the Select menu to quickly select or deselect all images.
Next is the Filter icon, which lets us show or hide images based on the star rating or label we applied to them using the full version of Adobe Bridge:



Use the full version of Adobe Bridge to add ratings or labels to your images.
By default, Mini Bridge sorts the images inside the Content Pod based on filename, but click on the Sort icon to bring up a menu with lots of other ways to sort them, including by file type, size, date created, and so on. Uncheck the Ascending Order option at the top of the menu if you'd prefer to view them in descending order:



Choose from lots of diferent ways to sort the images inside the Content Pod.
The fourth and final icon in the Content Pod is the Tools icon, which has nothing to do with selecting, filtering or sorting images. Clicking on it gives us access to several of Photoshop's powerful features like Photomerge and Merge to HDR Pro, which is also new in Photoshop CS5:



Use the Tools menu for quick access to Photoshop features like Batch, Merge to HDR Pro or Photomerge.
We'll finish off our tour of Mini Bridge with a few more navigation options next!

Navigating Through Folders

In the top left corner of Mini Bridge, above the Navigation Pod, are some options that help us navigate easily through the folders on our computer. Use the Browse buttons to move back and forth through your folder browsing history, just as you would in your favorite web browser:



Use the Back (left arrow) and Forward (right arrow) icons to move back and forth through your browsing history.
The icon to the right of the Browse buttons lets us quickly jump to any parent folder, or to any recently viewed folder or file. It also gives us another way to access our Favorites:



Quickly jump to any parent folder, or any recently viewed folder or file.
The Path Bar

One of the most helpful navigation tools in Mini Bridge, as well as in the full version of Adobe Bridge, is the Path Bar which runs along the top just above the Navigation Pod. The Path Bar shows us the complete path to our currently selected folder. For example, reading it from right to left, it's showing me that I'm currently viewing my Beach folder, which is inside my Places folder, which is inside my Pictures folder, and so on. Not only does the Path Bar display this information, but we can use it to jump instantly to any folder listed in the path simply by clicking on its name:



The Path Bar shows us the complete path to the folder we're in, and lets us jump to any folder listed in the path.
If, for some reason, you'd rather not view the Path Bar, click on the Panel View icon in the top right of Mini Bridge, then click on Path Bar to deselect it. Click it again later to turn it back on. You can also choose to show or hide the Navigation Pod and Preview Pod from here. We haven't seen the Preview Pod yet since it's turned off by default, so I'll select it from the list:



Use the Panel View menu to show or hide the Path Bar, Navigation Pod or Preview Pod.
The Preview Pod

The Preview Pod appears to the right of the Navigation Pod, effectively cutting the width of the Navigation Pod in half, and displays a preview of the image that's currently selected in the Content Pod. Problem is, the preview is too small to be of any real use, so it's usually best to leave the Preview Pod turned off and let the Navigation Pod use up the space. As we saw earlier, a better way to preview images is with the Preview option in the bottom right corner of the Content Pod:



The Preview Pod is great at taking up space but not much else. Best to leave it off.
To search for specific files, click on the Search icon (the magnifying glass) in the top right corner of Mini Bridge:



Click on the magnifying glass to search for files.
And finally, if you need access to advanced features in the full version of Adobe Bridge CS5, click on the Adobe Bridge icon to quickly jump to it:



The full version of Adobe Bridge CS5 is always just a click away.
And there we have it!