Written By Steve Patterson

In the previous tutorial, we took a quick, general tour of Adobe Bridge CS4 and its default layout, panels and options. Bridge CS4 is what's known as a digital asset manager and makes it easy for us to locate, manage and organize our ever-expanding collection of images. Of course, there isn't much need to manage photos if we don't have any to manage, so in this tutorial, we'll learn how to use Bridge CS4 to get our photos from our camera or memory card on to the computer.

One common misconception with Bridge is that it's a file storage program and that when we download our images, we import them directly into Bridge itself. That's not the case. Bridge has no ability at all to store files. It's simply a way to keep the images on our computer organized. We can use Bridge to get our photos from the camera on to the computer, but they're stored in normal folders on your hard drive in whatever location you specify when you download them, just as if you had used your operating system to copy the images from your camera to your computer. Bridge simply gives us a better way of doing the same thing, with features and options that wouldn't be available to us otherwise. Of course, where Bridge CS4 really shines is when it comes to managing the images after they've been downloaded, but before we get to all that good stuff, let's first get the photos on to the computer.

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Setting Up The Bridge Preferences

Before we start downloading anything, there's one option in the Bridge CS4 Preferences we need to look at. Press Ctrl+K (Win) / Command+K (Mac) on your keyboard to quickly bring up the Preferences dialog box. In the middle of the General Preferences section, you'll see an option that says When a Camera is Connected, Launch Adobe Photo Downloader:

The Photo Downloader is what we use to download the images from the camera or memory card, and if you select this option in the Preferences, Bridge CS4 will automatically launch the Photo Downloader for you when you connect your camera or memory card (using a card reader) to the computer. I recommend turning this option on to save you from having to launch the Photo Downloader manually each time, but if you're not a big fan of having dialog boxes popping open on your screen unannounced, feel free to leave it unchecked. You can always come back to the Preferences later if you change your mind. Click OK to exit out of the Preferences dialog box.

Step 1: Launch The Photo Downloader

With Bridge CS4 open on your screen, connect your digital camera or memory card to your computer. We learned how to launch Bridge from within Photoshop CS4 in the previous tutorial. If you selected the option we just looked at in the Bridge Preferences, the Photo Downloader dialog box will automatically appear on your screen, so you can skip to Step 2. If you didn't select the option, click on the Get Photos from Camera icon in the top left of the Bridge window (it's the little camera icon):

Just before the Photo Downloader opens, Bridge will ask if you want the Photo Downloader to open automatically from now on. Choosing Yes or No will select or deselect the same option in the Preferences. Again, you can go back to the Preferences at any time to change your mind. Click Yes or No to close out of the dialog box, at which point the Photo Downloader will appear on your screen:

Step 2: Select The Advanced Dialog Box

The Photo Downloader first appears in its Standard Dialog format with a list of options for choosing a folder to download the images to, renaming files if needed, and some other options we'll look at in a moment, but no way to actually see the images we're about to download. Rather than being forced to grab every single image off the camera or memory card whether we want them all or not, click on the Advanced Dialog button in the bottom left corner:

This switches the Photo Downloader to its much more useful Advanced Dialog format, which includes the same options from the Standard Dialog box, plus a large preview area where we can see thumbnails of all the images we're about to download. It also gives us the ability to add author and copyright information to our images. If you're not seeing your images, select your camera or memory card from the Source option above the preview area, then use the scroll bar along the right of the preview area to scroll through them all:

Step 3: Select The Images You Need

If you look below each thumbnail in the preview area, you'll see a checkbox. Bridge assumes we want to download every image so it goes ahead and selects them all for us by placing checkmarks in each of the checkboxes. If there are any images you don't want to download, simply click inside the checkbox for the image to remove the checkmark. If there's only a few images in the list that you want to download, click on the UnCheck All button below the preview area to deselect all of the images at once, then hold down your Ctrl (Win) / Command (Mac) key and click on the thumbnails of the images you need. As you click on each image, a highlight box will appear around it. Once you've highlighted all the images you want to import from the camera or memory card, click inside the checkbox of any of the highlighted images to select them all:

Step 4: Choose A Location To Save The Files

With all of the images we want to download selected, the next task is to tell the Photo Downloader which folder we want to save the images to on our computer. By default, it assumes we want to save them to our main Pictures folder. If you have a different location in mind, click on the Choose button in the top left corner of the dialog box, then navigate to the folder you want to save them to. I'll leave mine set to my Pictures directory:

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