3July2009
Adobe Bridge Thinks My Batteries Are Flat… Cannot Obtain All Files From This Device!
Posted by Rob_Nunn under: tutorials.
Occasionally, when I first started using Adobe Bridge, I’d plug in my camera (I haven’t got a card reader yet), try to “Get Photos From Camera”, and I’d get the following error message when the wizard tried to pull the photos off my 350d / Rebel XT:
“Cannot obtain all files from this device. Please ensure the device is connected properly, or that the battery is charged.”
Thinking that my camera’s battery was a little on the low side, I’d just pop in my spare, and everything would work fine – usually. However, sometimes even with a freshly charged battery they’d be a problem. I thought it was just my old Canon Battery (the original that came with the EOS 350d when new), but what I’ve found is an easy work-around.
When you go to retrieve your photo’s, after Adobe Bridge has made contact with your camera, let it generate ALL of the thumbnails before you click “Get Photos”.
Now Adobe Bridge works for me every-time, low battery or not!
Cheers, Rob.
17June2009
Adding Your Copyright, Contact And Website Details To Your Photographs Using Photoshop Or Adobe Bridge
Posted by Rob_Nunn under: tutorials.
There’s two ways to look at this one. You could say that by adding our copyright details to our photo’s we’re protecting them from unauthorised use on the web, but to be honest, if some-one’s going to “borrow” one of your photo’s from Flickr, I don’t think it’s going to make much difference.
What I do think though, is that it’s good to have your contact details embedded into your shots, so if someone came across one of your photos, and wanted to find out more or email you, the info is all there. In other words, it’s good practice and should be part of your digital work-flow. (And it’s easy-peasy!)
In these examples I’m going to be using Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Bridge. It might be slightly different in earlier / later versions, but you should get the general technique.
Let’s start with Photoshop. Simply work on your image, and before saving it, we’ll add our info to the exif data that is embedded into the photograph.
Just click on “File”, then in the drop-down menu, click on “File Info”:
Now we can add the info. The two main headings are “Description” and “IPTC Contact”. Click on the Tabs and add your details. Start by simply adding the copyright and your contact details, don’t add specifics about the photograph, because first we want to save a general template with this info, so we don’t have to type it in for every photo:
Once you’ve put in your data, click on the little arrow in the top right-hand corner. We can now save the template, and in future, simply apply that template to save time:
Now we can add specifics about this photo, perhaps title, description and keywords. Then we can save it, and that info will appear in Flickr when we upload it, or if we right-click “properties” and “advanced” in file browsers.
As you’ve seen, this is an easy and quick routine, but you do have to make sure you remember to do it for every photograph – wouldn’t it be great if you could automatically add this info to your photo’s as you copied them from your camera or card to your PC? Well, there is a way, and we do it with Adobe Bridge.
You can use Bridge to add exif data to your images already on your PC, but I’m going to show you how to add it as you’re copying your photo’s to your computer. If you start to use Bridge to always import your photo’s, this technique will become second nature, and you won’t ever forget to add your contact and copyright information.
(Make sure you’ve tried the above Photoshop method first, and saved a metadata template with your copyright and contact details.)
Fire up Bridge, connect your camera, click “File” and “Get Photo’s From Camera”:
In the dialogue box that appears, choose your camera or card from the “Get Photo’s From” box, tick the images you want, then select your previously saved template in the “Template To Use” drop-down box:
Now just click “Get Photo’s” and Adobe Bridge will import your shots, adding your data as it copies them to your pc. Easy!
So now, using this method, all of your imported images will have your basic copyright and contact details embedded into them.
If you want a more exhaustive guide to Adobe Bridge, with details about how to add keywords to photo’s, or batches of photo’s, check out Epic Edits Complete Guide To Adobe Bridge.
I hope you’ve found this article helpful,
Cheers, Rob.
