From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Fundamentals

Opening from Photoshop or Bridge - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Fundamentals

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Opening from Photoshop or Bridge

- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you how to open an image directly inside Photoshop, or with the help of Photoshop's companion file browser, Adobe Bridge. So, at this point, I've closed all my images, which is why by default, I'm seeing the startup screen. And so, if I want to open one of my recent images, I just have to click on this thumbnail. If I want to open an image that I'm not seeing, then I can either click on the Open button or go up to the File menu and choose the Open command. Either way, you have that common keyboard shortcut of Control + O here on the PC, or Command + O on a Mac. Now as you can see, I've got the Open dialogue box trained on the contents of the 01_open folder, and so now all I have to do is double-click on a file to open it. Where get things get a little confusing, however, here on the PC at any rate, is that we have this All Formats popup menu. Now generally speaking, you do want it to be set to All Formats, but things can get messed up every once in a while. For example, you might find that this first option, Photoshop.psd is selected, in which case you're only going to see the PSD files inside this folder. But it can get worse. On very rare occasions, you may find that the first file format in alphabetical order is selected, which is 3D Studio, at which point you're not going to see any files at all because none of them match your filtering criteria. If that happens to you, just go ahead and click on this popup menu, scroll all the way down the list using the scroll wheel on your mouse, and choose All Formats. Now as I was saying, this is a much more common problem here on the PC than it is on the Mac, but if for some reason you're not seeing any files, then you go to the bottom left corner of the Open dialogue box and click on the Options button, at which point you'll find an option called Enable, that you want to set to All Readable Documents. After which point, just go ahead and double-click on the file you want to open, like so, and then if you want to zoom in, just press Control + + (plus) here on the PC, or Command + + (plus) on the Mac. Another option is to use that dedicated file browser, and to get to it, you go up to the File menu and choose Browse in Bridge, and that'll go ahead and switch you to the Bridge application. Now this application is available with all versions of the Creative Cloud, but you do have to install it. So, if for some reason it's not coming up, then you would want to go to your Creative Cloud application, switch to the Apps option up here at the top of the screen, and then make sure in addition to Photoshop, you've installed Bridge. Alright, I'll go and switch back to Bridge. Now, the great thing about this application is it does allow you to browse your folders visually. And so for example, I'll go ahead and click on the Folders tab in the top left corner of the window, and then I click on this little so-called twirly triangle, which goes ahead and twirls open the contents of my Exercise Files folder, and then I'll click on the 01_open folder to see its contents, again represented by default as thumbnails. Now, you may wonder about the utility of this application, especially since we now have thumbnails on the Start screen inside Photoshop, but one of the great things about these thumbnails is that they're scalable. So if I drop down to this little slider here, and I drag the triangle to the right, I'm going to make my thumbnails larger, like so. You also have the option of working with keyboard shortcuts. So if I click on one of the thumbnails, just to make sure it's active, and then I press Control + - (minus), or Command + - (minus) on the Mac, I'll zoom out. If I press Control + + (plus), or Command + + (plus) on the Mac, I'll zoom in. And so, you have less control than you do with the slider, but it can be very handy. Then, all you need to do is double-click on a file in order to open it up inside Photoshop, like so. Alright, now things might not always work that well however, in which case, I'll go up to the File menu and choose Browse in Bridge in order to switch to the Bridge. Let's say your Ping file is opening in the wrong application. In that case, what you'd want to do is go to the Edit menu here on the PC, that's going to be the Bridge menu on the Mac, and then choose the Preferences command in order to bring up the Preferences dialogue box. Then, go ahead and click on File Type Associations, and you're just going to see an enormous list of different file formats that are available to you. If Ping is the one you need to reconcile, then look for Portable Network Graphics, PNG, and make sure that it is set to the most recent version of Photoshop, after which point just go ahead and click OK. And now, if you double-click on the Ping file, it's going to open in Photoshop, like so. Alright, a couple of other things to note: I'll go up to the File menu and choose Browse in Bridge, and I want you to see that each image thumbnail includes a file name, but it can include so much more. And so for example, you can see the last date you modified a file, the size of the image on disk, and so forth. And to make that happen, return to the Edit menu, that's the Bridge menu on the Mac, choose the Preferences command, and this time go ahead and select Thumbnails in this left-hand list. And now I'm going to move the dialogue box over a little bit so you can see what's happening onscreen. If I turn on Show: for Date Modified, I will see the date modified, on the fly in the background. If I turn on Show: Dimensions, I will see the file size in pixels, which can be very handy. You can also turn on the Size of the image on disk, and then we've got this other option here, that you can set to anything you like. And this is true for all the options. You have lists that are available to you, and I tend to set it to Date Created, but of course you can go your own way. And now I'll turn on the Show: checkbox for that item as well, and then I'll click OK in order to accept that change. And that, friends, is how you open an image either directly inside Photoshop, or using its companion file browser, Adobe Bridge.

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