Aug. 27, 2008
When managing your assets in Bridge you get a high quality preview, InDesign files included…
In this post I want to bring your attention to an often dismissed preference in InDesign that makes viewing InDesign files in Bridge seem a little more practical. I often hear people complaining that they really like sorting images in Bridge, however when it comes to InDesign files there is an element of frustration. It would seem that when you preview an InDesign file in Bridge you get nothing more than a medium 256 x 256 pixel preview of your file. Well there is a preference available to make this preview as large as 1024 pixels, let’s take a look.
You need be be aware that when you preview your InDesign file in Bridge you need to be looking at your file preferably in the “Horizontal Filmstrip” or “Vertical Filmstrip” workspaces to get the largest possible view of your InDesign file. The workspaces are found in Bridge by going to Window > Workspace.
To change the preview size of your InDesign files, make sure you have no files open and choose InDesign > Preferences > File Handling (Mac OS) or Edit > Preferences > File Handling (Windows). Once you’ve located the “File Handling” tab find the “Saving InDesign Files” section and change the “Preview Size” to “Extra Large 1024 x 1024″. All files saved from now on will have a preview of 1024 pixels when previewed in Bridge. It’s important to note you only get a preview of the first spread in the document, unfortunately there’s no option to toggle through the other pages within the document.
If you would prefer to leave this preference off by default you can save a preview of your file at your discretion. Choose File > Save As. In the lower left of the Save As dialogue that appears you will see the option “Always Save Preview Images with Documents”, choose this and a preview will be saved within this file for viewing in Bridge. The size of the preview is determined by the current preference setting.
Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.
