Known Participant

Question

To this day, "Scaled to Fit/Fill" in Bridge Slideshow Options still does not work!

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
April 19, 2019
3 replies
5062 views

How long has this issue been plaguing Bridge?

I've found questions online about this topic going back many years now....with none of those related questions that are posted here on these Forums having any real resolution or answer....

It makes Bridge impossible to use in a group / team setting as an image browser / presenter.

I'm not kidding when I say that this simple, stupid, tiny detailed option is the sole reason I have completely stopped using Bridge in a professional setting.

Both of the other image cataloging / viewing program I have ever used in an office team situation does this simple and very necessary task perfectly!

I'm talking specifically about ThumbsPlus and Extensis Portfolio.

When a folder of images are all of various pixel dimensions, and a user checks "Scaled to Fit" in Slideshow Options and then runs the Slideshow, one can reasonably assume that EVERY IMAGE SHOULD BE FIT TO THE CURRENT SCREEN, PROPORTIONALLY! The remainder of the image should be letterboxed.

But that simply doesn't happen with Bridge. And it never has. On any OS I have tried it on.

One wonders why Adobe engineers wasted the 10 minutes it took to type those options and their respective checkboxes into the Options dialog box at all.

So completely frustrating.

I don't care if the images range from 10,000 x 10,000 pixels down to 10 x 10 pixels.....every single image in a folder should be stretched up to FIT the screen if you check that Slideshow Option.

Has anybody EVER gotten this "feature" to work in Bridge?

This topic has been closed for replies.

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sincere_Radiance16B8Author

Known Participant

It's the 11th of October in the year 2020, and still to this day, version 10.1.1.166 of Adobe Bridge has an option under View > Slideshow Options > When Presenting Slides, Show Slides > Scaled to Fit, and that option DOES NOT WORK as phrased and as expected from every user of every other software that allows full-screen display of image assets.

To all the non-Adobe-employee Community Professionals who have defended this 'functionality', I would challenge you to:

Name any other major software that offers a "Scale to Fit" option in viewing preferences that does NOT scale the images to the current viewport during full-screen playback, even if the image has to be scaled up to do so.
Explain why the option is phrased "When PRESENTING Slides, Show Slides..." if Adobe Bridge software was NOT intended to be used for PRESENTATIONS of images.
Do any kind of rudimentary user behavior study that shows real business people using Adobe Bridge in a work environment to display a folder of images quickly to co-workers or to clients rather than taking the unnecessary time to lay out a slideshow in InDesign or PowerPoint. Then quantify how many of those users have to adjust the view zoom settings during fullscreen playback to maximize the use of pixels they have on their display (a different setting for each and every image if any are smaller in resolution than the current screen resolution).
Explain how any of this makes sense to users.

Further, the options under "When Presenting, Show Slides" are:

Centered
Scaled to Fit
Scaled to Fill

The 1st of these options is an Alignment option.

The other 2 options are Scaling options.

Why mix these options in a dialog box?

And why, oh why, when choosing Centered, would a user not assume that this option does NOT allow for scaling the image while the other 2 do? If any reasonable user did not want the images scaled UP when played back, they would choose the option that doesn't involve Scaling.

One can only presume there would be another options section with choices like:

Alignment: Centered, Left, Right, Top, Bottom

Scaling: Original, Scaled to Fit, Scaled to Fill, Do Not Scale Up (checkbox)

This is poor UI / UX design, period.

And it still persists in this software after many years.

It is inconceivable that Adobe has ever considered Bridge a "non-collaborative" tool.

Nobody in the world makes software that ignores collaboration today.

It's the entire name of the game now. (Hence Adobe's Cloud services.....its Libraries features......)

To say, " but collaboration is supposed to happen over here in these other software products" is laughable.

And it should be embarrassing enough for Adobe to see users talking about the products this way to evaluate features without being harangued by the very users who are paying for the honor.

griffinlibby

Participant

Just chiming in to say I too have wanted the scale-up feature in Bridge for years. I've resorted to batch resizing folders of images to a resolution that will fill my monitor. Very sucky workaround.

gary_sc

Community Expert

That's your call but Bridge will scale UP TO 100% of the image and then stop scalling.

For those like me who have a 5K monitor, yes, it would be nice to see these images at full size but I'd rather see a smaller image than an image that is blurred out of existance.

The only thing I can suggest for you is to go to:

https://adobebridge.uservoice.com

and make a feature request that there be an OPTION (checkbox ?) to scale images in a slide show to full size during slideshows. I know I would not want that so that's why I suggest you request it as an option.

But I do say good luck! And I do mean that.

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Andy Voss

Participant

Although I'm a little bit late to this forum, I totally agree with you with the "Scale to fit" option that should be added. Today, I have updated Bridge with the hope of seeing this feature added to it. But guess what? Nope.

Although I pay for this subscription, I purchased Photo Mechanic and it does exactly what we're asking for and you don't have to click anywhere. I found it to be way faster also than Bridge (especially when viewing RAWs). The only downside is that colour tags are not cross-platform. But that downside is subjective.

Everytime Adobe does a Bridge update, I always wish they added the scale to fit option. I still don't get it why such a big company can't add such a "small" feature.

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Allen Cobb

Inspiring

I just had the same disappointing experience. My current project has about 60 small AI files, and when I get to a landmark stage, I need to make a set of 60 JPGs. Using Bridge, which does a nice job previewing AI files (something Win10's previewer can only barely do), I thought I'd just make an Export Preset and I could build them all in a jiffy.

Sadly, nope. I can specify everything but the size. The Image Size section offers Constrain to Fit, but not Scale to Fit (which I would take to mean scaling up or down). So all I can do is save JPGs in the original size, which is scaled in Illy to fit the printed page, but which is only 375 pixels wide when it resides in Illy. It's vectors, right? So when they're placed in InDesign, they get printed at 300dpi. Nice. But there's still no way to get reasonably sized JPGs out of the AI files. Other than to have AI open 60 files, one after another, etc., etc.

I was really hoping Bridge could do this now.

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Katie Houghton

Inspiring

Though Adobe Bridge and Extensis Portfolio are both digital asset management tools, Extensis Portfolio has a server side solution which gives it the ability for collaboration. Adobe Bridge and Adobe Lightroom are standalone asset management tools. They are designed to work with one user. Today Adobe offers collaboration ability through the Adobe Cloud and with Enterprise and Team. Adobe Bridge has never meant to be a collaborative tool. It is a support tool for the Adobe line. I use it with most of my Create Cloud apps.

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sincere_Radiance16B8Author

Known Participant

Katie, with all due respect, how is this an answer to my question?

If Adobe literally puts an option in their software that says "SCALED TO FIT" and it doesn't work for anyone, that's a PROBLEM.

The solution isn't to say "Well, other software does collaboration and team presentation better" and give Adobe a pass on shoddy software development!

People are PAYING for this software, and its hard-coded feature set doesn't work.

???

Daniel E Lane

Inspiring

I don't think you are understanding what Katie was saying. You are trying to use Bridge for something it was not designed to be used for. In other words, wrong tool for the job. Bridge is a piece of software to be used for an individual to organize and access all of their files, and facilitate the easy migration of files from one program to another. It's really not a slideshow/presentation tool. It is meant for one person to use. Not for use as a team tool, a presentation tool or anything of the sort. If you want to collaborate with others, do it through the Adobe Cloud. Collaboration, use Team or Enterprise. Here are a few links to learn what you should be doing if you want to collaborate with Adobe software in a group setting...https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/business/teams.html

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/business/teams.html

https://www.adobe.com/enterprise.html

https://spark.adobe.com/make/presentation-maker/

https://helpx.adobe.com/presenter/using/creating-presentations.html

And with all of those, you can use Bridge to facilitate getting your files into any of those Adobe software.