All of your documents contain some metadata. For example, images contain information from the device that captured them or created them. Adobe Bridge allows you to enter your own metadata too. Prior to the release of Adobe Bridge and the Adobe Photoshop File Browser, this task was very laborious. You had to open the images one by one in Photoshop and enter the information in the File Info box and then resave the file. Doing a few dozen images could take hours. Luckily, those days are long behind us. Now you can select multiple files in Adobe Bridge and enter the metadata all at once in seconds.

What’s the advantage of entering metadata?

The biggest advantage to using metadata is that it makes your files searchable. For example, if your image were named DSC2004.jpg, you wouldn’t know what it was until you looked at it, nor would you be able to search for it unless you knew its name. However, if the file had a description, you could search for text that appears in the description and find it. (Adobe Bridge has a powerful Find function that is discussed later in this tutorial.) The metadata actually travels with the file and is therefore searchable by other applications. Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger includes a new search function called Spotlight. Spotlight now searches metadata, and the metadata you enter in Adobe Bridge allows your documents to show up in Spotlight search results.

Here’s how to add metadata to your documents:

1. Start Adobe Bridge and select one or more documents.
2. Choose Window > Workspace > Metadata Focus. This step is not required, but it enlarges the Metadata palette and makes it the main focus of the side panel.
3. Scroll down to the IPTC core and enter your creator information.

Once you’ve entered all the information about your file, click the Apply button in the bottom right corner of the Metadata palette. It looks like a checkmark.

Create and assign new keywords

In addition to metadata, you have the ability to assign keywords to your documents. I look at keywords as categories into which I group similar documents. Adobe Bridge comes with several default keywords such as Birthday, Graduation, and places such as New York and San Francisco. Most likely, only a couple of these default keywords will apply to you. Therefore, it’s important to know how to create your own keywords. It’s very easy to do:

1. Choose View > Keywords Panel if the Keywords panel on the left side of the Adobe Bridge window is not visible.
2. Click the New Keyword button at the bottom of the palette. It looks like a pad of paper.
3. Name your keyword. For this example, I named mine Anniversary.
4. Press Return or Enter to lock in your name.