Roy Killen
It is sometimes useful to be able to produce a "small" version of an image directly from Bridge without opening it in Photoshop and going through the Image>Image size procedure. For example, you might have several images that you want to email.
You can use this procedure directly with RAW images or you can use it with TIFF, JPEG or Photoshop files.
The procedure described below uses Adobe Bridge CS3 (the version that comes with Photoshop CS3). Some earlier versions of Bridge can be used the same way.
Depending on how you have your preferences set in Bridge, your screen may look different from that show aboce.
In the example I have selected three images (notice that they are highlighted with light grey shading).
To do this, hold down the Control key (or the Command key if you are using a Mac) and click once on each of the images you want to select.
You wil notice that I have selected three images that are all different types (one NEF [Nikon's version of RAW], one TIFF and one PSD) - that's OK, the images you want to resize can be all the same type of they can be different types.
Note: "TOOLS" is one of the menu items at the top of you screen, when you click on it the first menu drops down and when you click on "Photoshop" the next menu drops down - then just click on "Image Processor"
If Photoshop is not already open it will now open automatically.
You will then see the following dialogue window:
1. In the first section it will confirm how many images you have selected - in this example it is 3. Do not tick the "Open first image to apply settings" box.
2. Here you have to select the location to save the files that are resized. If you click on the button next to "Save in Same Location (as shown above) the images will be saved to the same directory (folder) as the directory from which you selected them in Bridge - but they will be put into a sub-directory called JPEG or TIFF (depending on the file type you select in the next step). If you click on the button next to "Select Folder" and then click on the "Select Folder" button you can navigate to any directory where you want to save the files - again they will be put into a sub-directory called JPEG or TIFF.
3. You can save the resized files as JPEG, PSD or TIFF - or all of them at the same time if you want to. In the example I have chosen JPEG, set the quallity to 12, ticked the box to resize the file so that the maximum dimension (width or height) will be 600 pixels. You can set the maximum height and width to different values if you want to. If you do not tick the "Resize to fit" box the file will be saved with its original pixel dimensions.
4. I have also ticked the box to change the colour profile to sRGB (which is a good idea if you are emailing the image).
5. You don't need to check any boxes in this section if you are doing simple resizing (eg for email).
6. Click the "Run" button and the files wil be resized and converted according to the settings above, and then saved. While this is happening you might see files opening and closing in Photoshop.
If you selected "Save in Same Location" in the previous step, when you go back to Bridge you will see a folder labelled "JPEG" in that location.
If you double click on this folder it will open in Bridge to show you the files that you just converted.
Notice that becasue of the settings I had chosen, all these files are JPEGs, the maximum dimension (width or height) on each image is 600 pixels and the files sizes have been reduced from 19.31MB, 51.17MB and 55.52MB to 262KB, 239KB and 239KB respectively. They are now ready for emailing.
The method described above is not the only way to resize images, but it is convenient if you are a frequent user of Adobe Bridge.
Comments on this tutorial and suggestions for improving it are welcome. You may leave your comments on this web site or email me.
Roy Killen
20th April 2008
Email: roykillen@mac.com
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