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Bridge Workflow Collection - The Manual

Introduction | Workflows for Files , Images , Movies , Music , PDF | Adding your own Workflows | Bugs

Introduction

What is the Bridge Workflow Collection?

The Bridge Workflow Collection enables Adobe Bridge™ to execute Automator™ workflows with the currently selected files. Automator is a very simple and fast way to automate your work, even for those people, who have no programming experiences. The Bridge Workflow Collection contains more than 20 useful workflows for Bridge plus the ability to add your own workflows to the collection. Every workflow is then executable from the Bridge menu "Workflows".

Requirements

Adobe Bridge CS4, MacOS 10.5 (Leopard). Note: Bridge is a trademark of Adobe (www.adobe.com) and Automator is a trademark of Apple (www.apple.com).

Files

Burn To Disk: This workflow burns a CD or DVD with the selected files.
Create Alias: This workflow creates an alias for every selected file. The user specifies the folder for the alias files.
Create Archive: This workflow creates an archive for the selected files. Name and target directory for the archive are specified by the user.
Create Disk Image: Creates a disk image with the selected files. Several options.
Mail Files: Creates a new Mail and adds the selected files as attachment to the mail. Note that the files will not be compressed.
Set Application for Files: Sets the default application which shall be used by Finder to open the selected file.
Set File Label: Sets the Finder color label for the selected files.
Set Spotlight Comments: Sets Spotlight comments for the selected files.

Images

Add Image to iPhoto: Adds the selected images to the iPhoto library.
Black and White Filter: Applies a Black & White filter on the selected images. You should copy the files before you execute this workflow. May be slow for larger files.
More information...
Change Type of Image: Changes the image type. You can convert TIFF files to JPEG files with this workflow. The original files will be destroyed.
Copy iPhoto Images to Folder: You have to select a single folder in Bridge for this workflow. This workflow lets you select items from iPhoto and then the selected files will be copied to the folder you specified.
Create Contact Sheet: Creates contact sheets from the selected files and movies. Can be verz slow and could produce large output files since it does not resize or compress the input images.
More information...
Create Video Show: Creates a QuickTime slideshow from the selected images.
More information...
Create Video Show: Creates a QuickTime slideshow from the selected images.
More information...
Create Web Gallery: Creates a web gallery from the selected images.
More information...
Crop Images: Scales and crops the selected images. Note that the original files will be overwritten.
Make Desktop Image: Makes the selected image the desktop image.
Open in Preview: Opens the images in Preview.
Print Images: Prints the selected images.

Movies

Browse Movies: Opens a browser window for the selected movies.
Export Movies: Export the selected movies in several formats.
Move to Movies Folder: Moves the files to the Movies folder.
Play Movies: Opens a QuickTime player to show the movies.
Set Movie Annotations: Sets the annotations for the selected movies.

Music

Import Files into iTunes: Imports the selected music files into the iTunes librray.

PDF

Combine PDF Pages: Concatenates the selected PDF files. This workflow contains several actions which require user input (Combine, Move the output file, Rename the outputfile)
New PDF Contact Sheet: Simpler method to create contact sheets
Render PDF Pages as Images: Creates images from the PDF pages
Set PDF Metadata: Sets the PDF metadata.

Adding your own Workflows

Many of the above mentioned workflows are very simple. You probably want to create your own workflows. For example, you may want to have a workflow that resizes and compresses the selected images, creates an archive with the new images and then creates a mail with the archive as attachment in one single step. It is quite easy to create such workflows.
To add your workflows to the Bridge Workflow Collection, everything you have to do, is to copy them to the folder


Your-Home-Folder/Library/Workflows/Applications/Bridge

I recommend, that you create new sub-folders for your own workflows to avoid conflicts, when this library is updated.

Known Bugs

The "Workflows" menu in Bridge is sometimes disabled. Don't know why. Restarting Bridge helps.
Some Automator actions do work correctly, when called from Bridge. Bridge may hang-up or crash. All of the above workflows are tested (but only on one machine...), but you may encounter problems with your own workflows.