Bridge is a Better Finder Renamer

There are lots of file renamers out there, Better Finder Renamer being one of the, well, better ones. But since Bridge included a rename function, I often just end up using Bridge instead. And it’s actually not bad, for instance, it can do string substitution, with regular expressions too!

This is what Adobe’s help file says:

String Substitution
Allows you to change all or part of a filename to custom text. First, choose what you want to replace: Original Filename replaces the string from the original filename. Intermediate Filename replaces a string that is defined by preceding options in the New Filenamespop-up menus. Use Regular Expression allows you to use regular expressions to find strings based on patterns in filenames. Replace All replaces all substrings that match the pattern in the source string.

In this case, I need to find and delete a bunch of sequenced numbers generated by Photoshop’s Export layers to files script. so I need the expression to find any number repeating zero or more times that’s sandwitched between two underscores…

Well, okay, but I don’t really know how to write regular expressions… But I know InDesign has a Grep Search, which allows me to do regular expressions with dropdown menus. So I’ll let InDesign do it.

Then a quick google to find how to do an underscore, and i’m ready to go.

Here’s what it ended up looking like [_\d?_] and it found them. Bingo!

Create a 360° Image Sequence for Digital Publishing

Click to see the car rotate!

One of the features of Adobe’s Digital Publishing System is that you can create an image sequence overlay through the new overlay panel. With this interaction, you can scrub back and forth through a sequence of images with a swipe of your finger. The sequence of images can be anything, but one popular implementation is to use it as a 360° product viewer. Let’s do this!

Some of the samples I’ve seen uses 3D rendering software to come up with the individual images. Since I’m not apt at 3D rendering, I’ll photograph my product.

Materials

To photograph your 360 image sequence I used the following:

• A cheap plastic turn table.
• A circle cutout with a mark every 10 degrees.
  I made my in Illustrator, but you can download a copy 10degree_circle.
  There is a start/stop marker. and a faint cross in the center to help you center it on the turn table.
• Camera with Manual settings.
• Tripod
• Shutter Release

Shooting the Images

• You can see my setup here.
• I set my camera to full manual mode, with a locked shutter speed and aperture, the exposure will be the same every time. This will help in post processing. I also switched off auto focus after I found a good focal point.
• Before shooting, I rotate the whole object around while looking through the camera viewfinder to make sure the object doesn’t drift off center.
• I line up my start/stop marker on my circle to a pen, on the side away from the main light source. I don’t want to block the light each time I have to rotate the object.
• A shutter release is nice because I don’t really need to, or want to, be in front of the camera at this point. I am off to the side, rotating and lining up my circle for the next shot.

Post Processing

• After shooting, I open up all the images in Bridge and run a batch rename (for DPS)
• Open everything up in Photoshop, crop and clean up your images. use only global adjustments so you can replicate it for each and every photo. Record an action to make this part easier.
• Load the images into a stack in Bridge. You can “play” a Bridge stack as if it’s a movie. This will act as a preview of the rotation.

Make an Animated Gif

For this post, I made the sequence into an animated gif. Here’s how

• Load all the images into one Photoshop file by using File > scripts > load files into stack…
• Then, in the animation panel, choose Make Frames from Layers
• Down sample the image so it’s small. (i made my 300 pixels wide)
• Save as a Gif using the Save for web and devices dialog box

Now you have an image sequence ready to load into DPS!

Mini Bridge + Application Frame (Macs) = Winning Workspace (?)

I don’t use Bridge nearly as often as I should. But not I found a workspace configuration that seems to work well with MiniBridge in CS5.The layout mimics a Film Strip View that you see in Lightroom and Bridge, so it’s easy to get use to.

• Turn on Application Frame [Window > Application Frame] if you are on a mac. This will allow you to dock the bridge panel to the bottom of the screen, and the document window won’t over run it. It’ll also look and feel more like a PC
• Dock the Mini Bridge to the bottom of the screen and presto.

Bridge File Type Associations

Bridge has its own set of File Type Associations that are not the same as what your computer system’s file type associations. You can tell bridge to open up files in a certain program, while your OS may want to open it up in another. To set up Bridge’s file type associations, go to Edit > Preferences > File Type Associations.

Adobe Bridge CS5: Export Panel

New in Bridge CS5 is the Export Panel, where you can drag and drop photos (raw images as well) and have it automatically exported out to Flickr, Facebook, Photoshop.com, or to your hard drive!

Better Batch Rename in Bridge CS5

Better Watermarks in Bridge CS5 Output

Adobe Bridge: Reveal All Recent Files

If you regularly work in a lot of different folders across a large number of projects, this should be a big time saver. In Bridge CS4 and up, the Path Bar, has an icon that looks like a clock with a backwards arrow on it. Click on that, and you can get bridge to display all the recent files you worked on through adobe applications. Hurray for saving time!

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to display non-adobe file formats (like text files or excel files) even though bridge is able to see them regularly.

Bridge/Mini Bridge + InDesign Integration: Show Me the Links

Bridge + Mini Bridge does better previews with InDesign files. Now you can specify it to show multiple pages of the file in the preview. You can also ask Bridge to show you all the files that are linked to the InDesign file. This is especially great if your links are in multiple locations!

Applying Metadata: Filtering White Color Labels in Lightroom and Bridge

The real evidence that labels really are text descriptions as opposed to colors can be seen when you try to filter your images. Even if you don’t have ANY matching text descriptions and all the colors show up as white, Bridge and Lightroom will see the text descriptions of the label and allow you to sort by the text label.

Filter by Labels in Bridge

Filter by “Color” Labels in Lightroom