The CSI Tool in Adobe Bridge

Someone asked me recently what, exactly, Adobe Bridge is. Well, I answered, It’s an operating system! It handles files, creates folders, allows you to name, rename and delete items. It is also a preview program that can display nearly any kind of image, any kind of video, any kind of sound, any PDF document, and much more.

I use it mostly for photography – I batch rename, sort, file, sub-sort, rename again, and preview images in Bridge. The recent version, CS3, got about a trillion times slower than its predecessor (I am running on a not-too-current computer, so the software is reminding me constantly how slowly my computer putts along), but overall it got better.

The magnifier tool in Adobe Bridge is extraordinary. It allows you to look into high-resolution images without first opening them. I used it here to get the Contractor’s license number from a sign on a tractor. Bridge handled that task with ease. Notice that the magnifier is showing detail that would otherwise be difficult to read without first opening the image.
One of the best things that Bridge can do is to show extraordinary detail in an image that has not yet been opened in Photoshop. I call it the CSI tool, because it looks like one of those fictional instruments they use in the Crime Scene Investigator shows. “Look, Grissom! The Bad-Guy-Detector is showing that this man recently walked on carpet made in Taiwan on a Thursday!” (My favorite was an instrument they showed in one episode which purportedly could show the difference between legally-mined and “blood” diamonds. It was nothing short of preposterous!) Back to Bridge…

If you want to check the sharpness of an image, or see detail in a high-resolution image, you can click on its preview in Bridge, and the program (after a few seconds of disk-grinding) will show you the full-resolution image under an on-screen magnifying glass; move the magnifier around, and you see a different part of the image. I find it really extraordinary, and I use it often now that I know how powerful it is.

A few days ago I needed to know the Contractor’s License Number of a man whose tractor appeared in an ad. I popped into Bridge, opened the folder of images of the fellow, and then clicked on the CSI tool. There was the required number – and I never opened the image!

The CSI tool can only magnify to the degree that there is information in an image, but it will do a lot with the photos from a professional digital camera. Another use I put it to recently was to read the name badges of a group of people in a photo to write the caption. It allowed me to read these without difficulty. This tool is better than the fictional instruments used on the TV shows, and most of us own it already.