Adobe's Bridge is a powerful, easy-to-use media manager for visual people, letting you easily organize, browse, locate, and view creative assets.
I have previously written about how handy Acrobat's Organizer can be, but it is a child application to Acrobat, and can therefore not be opened on its own. Organizer MUST be opened from within Acrobat, and it closes down when Acrobat is exited.
CS4 users (earlier versions too) probably have spent time exploring and using some of Bridge's many useful features and capabilities. There doesn't seem to be too much buzz about how Bridge can work with PDF files, so I'm gonna stir things up here with some PDF-specific functionality of Bridge.
Bridge will naturally offer scalable thumbnails of your PDF files. If you right-click a PDF file on a PC (or ctrl-click on a Mac) and select Open with, you will find options allowing you to open the PDF file in a variety of programs... NOT merely Acrobat. Your program list will be dependent on your installed applications (for instance, Creative Suite users will find Photoshop and Illustrator listed as options). The individual programs will then walk you through opening options (resolution, pages included, etc.).
Bridge allows you to preview a PDF file without ever opening Acrobat. If you change Bridge's viewing option to Filmstrip (Window > Workspace), you can then preview a selected PDF, complete with page navigation controls.
Want to compare several PDF files visually without opening any of them? While still in Filmstrip view, select multiple PDF files. This won't be as powerful as Acrobat's Compare Documents feature, but sometime a quick glance is all that's required.
I have previously written about how handy Acrobat's Organizer can be, but it is a child application to Acrobat, and can therefore not be opened on its own. Organizer MUST be opened from within Acrobat, and it closes down when Acrobat is exited.
CS4 users (earlier versions too) probably have spent time exploring and using some of Bridge's many useful features and capabilities. There doesn't seem to be too much buzz about how Bridge can work with PDF files, so I'm gonna stir things up here with some PDF-specific functionality of Bridge.
Bridge will naturally offer scalable thumbnails of your PDF files. If you right-click a PDF file on a PC (or ctrl-click on a Mac) and select Open with, you will find options allowing you to open the PDF file in a variety of programs... NOT merely Acrobat. Your program list will be dependent on your installed applications (for instance, Creative Suite users will find Photoshop and Illustrator listed as options). The individual programs will then walk you through opening options (resolution, pages included, etc.).
Bridge allows you to preview a PDF file without ever opening Acrobat. If you change Bridge's viewing option to Filmstrip (Window > Workspace), you can then preview a selected PDF, complete with page navigation controls.
Want to compare several PDF files visually without opening any of them? While still in Filmstrip view, select multiple PDF files. This won't be as powerful as Acrobat's Compare Documents feature, but sometime a quick glance is all that's required.
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David R. Mankin is a Certified Technical Trainer, desktop publisher, computer graphic artist, and Web page developer. He is an Adobe-Certified Expert in Acrobat.
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