Photoshop Interface Essentials

When people start using Photoshop to open their files, they typically use the File menu and then select Open. Doing this brings up the operating systems open dialog box, where you can see thumbnails of our images or if we want to see more information we can select from any of the other options here. And I can navigate to different folders, but if I want to see larger thumbnails, or if I want to actually change information, like add metadata, keywords, or copyright information, I can't do that in the Open dialog box.
I'll go ahead and cancel out of here, and instead, I'm going to use the File menu, and then select Browse in Bridge. Now Bridge is separate application that comes for free with Photoshop, or your creative cloud membership, but it does have a separate installer so you will need to install it. If you haven't already installed Bridge, please watch the video on installing Bridge in the introduction section. Here you can see that in bridge I can see a number of images at one time. I can increase the thumbnail size for each image, or I can decrease it. I can also quickly navigate to other folders, and see the contents of those folders.
When I select an image, I can see a preview on the right hand side. We can see information about image. And if I scroll in the Meta Data panel, we could even enter in information like copy right information. If I move over to the Keywords panel I can also add keywords, I'll switch back to the Meta Data panel. And then, we'll notice that on the left we can see that I have a filter panel, which is dedicated to helping me find the images that I'm looking for based on different search criteria. I also have the option to create virtual collections, of different images, without moving them around on my hard drive. If I want to open an image, all I need to do is double-click on the image in the content area in Bridge, and it will open it up in Photoshop. If I don't want to do anything to this image, I'll go ahead and close it using the keyboard shortcut Cmd+w on the Mac, or Ctrl+w on Windows. If I want to return to Bridge, I can either choose the File menu and then Browse and Bridge, or I can use the keyboard shortcut, Cmd + Option + o, or Ctrl + Alt + O on Windows.
If I decide that I don't want to open a file from Bridge, and I simply want to return back to Photoshop, I can click on the boomerang icon up here in the upper left. Again to navigate back, I'll use Cmd+Option O or Ctrl+Alt 0. And here's a little shortcut. You'll notice that the second image has an icon right here that tells me that it has been in the Camera Raw dialogue box, and some changes have been made to it. If I've already made those changes, and I simply want to open this image in Photoshop, and I don't need to see the Camera Raw dialogue box again, all I need to do is hold down the Shift key and double click in the image area. Instead of bringing up Camera Raw, I'll jump directly to Photoshop and the file will open.
As you can see, it's much easier to work with Bridge as oppose to the operating system's open dialogue box to find and open your photographs.