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MikeJennings
MikeJennings
Participating Frequently
March 23, 2019
Question

Why is it so hard to use document titles in Bridge?

  • March 23, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 2044 views

I just sold my boss on using Bridge to organize her assets.  She kept renaming files with titles that made sense to her and causing problems when she went to talk to the illustrator about them -- he didn't know what file she was talking about.  I convinced her to use Title metadata in Bridge, only do discover that it's damn near impossible to FIND it and you certainly can't add it to any of the most useful views.

I don't care about the filename.  If I want to see the file I Reveal in Finder.  Folders are somewhat more useful, filename almost never is.  But it's got the most important position in the Content pane and you can't move it out of there.  And you can't even add Title to another column.

I'm going to say that again.  You can't dd the Title to the visible metadata in the content pane.

Why is something so basic as Title so hard to use in Bridge?  It wasn't even enabled by default in the Preferences. It's hard to use in the Mac, it's hard to use in the Photos app...

I want to be able to get a list view that shows titles, and easily edit the document title in place, like you can with the filename.  I don't want her changing the filenames, or even seeing them!  Changing the filenames causes havoc if they're linked in After Effects and other apps, and she would be perfectly happy with a title field, especially if there was an easy and obvious way to populate that field with the filename (minus extension) if it's empty.  Then she could rename harmlessly to her heart's content.

Now I have to teach her Lightroom -- mostly how not to change anything but the library metadata.  It's the wrong tool for the job.  Or find some other tool that hopefully plays nice with the Creative Cloud software and doesn't blow my budget.

    2 replies

    MikeJennings
    MikeJenningsAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    March 25, 2019

    There are many reasons to want to retitle an asset without changing the filename. Here are a few:

    1. As in the above case, when multiple people are using a file but one of those people wants to work with it under a different title
    2. When there is already a file naming convention in use that makes it impossible to rename
    3. When files are embedded in InDesign, Premiere etc, and renaming them would break a link
    4. When someone wants to use special characters not supported by the host filesystem (this is a Big Deal for Creative Cloud for Teams, we've discovered -- it even affects comp names in After Effects)

    In our case, all of the above apply.

    Obviously, a proper asset management system would be appropriate, but the project is too near to completion to acquire, deploy and introduce one.  I was hoping to get away with Bridge.

      L
      Lumigraphics
      Legend
      March 25, 2019

      I'm still not seeing the problem. Change the title in the metadata panel if needed. I suppose you could create a panel that showed the current title and allowed changes, but you'd need to learn a bit about scripting.

      Barbie-qu
      Barbie-qu
      Participant
      June 12, 2019

      The Title field is important to my workflows as well because it maps to the Title field in Lightroom. This is more useful than the Heading field in Bridge.

      The problem is that Title is not available as a choice for column headings in the list view, nor can it be displayed as one of the additional lines of thumbnail metadata.

      If your workflow relies on seeing/sorting/filtering images by Title metadata, this task is laborious in the current version of Bridge (v9.0)

      NOTE: instigating a search through CTRL + F allows you to choose 'Document title' as a criteria

      L
      Lumigraphics
      Legend
      March 25, 2019

      Filename is the universal way that people deal with files and its been like that since the beginning. Why not just use a standard naming scheme?

      joe.easterly
      joe.easterly
      Participant
      November 16, 2022

      Because Document Titles and Filenames are two completely different things, and it needs to be the case. A filename is a hopefully unique identifier for a file, especially in the context of its folder organization scheme. A document title is a word or phrase that expresses the "main idea" of the work in the file.

      As our digital projects develop over time and the way we use the files change, that main idea of the file changes with them. Old titles become no longer useful. Or a collaborator thinks naming a file "Empire State Building" is better than "Looking West, 34th St. N.Y.C."

      Filenames need to be independent of their contents so when projects shift like this you don't end up with missing and/or duplicate files.

      L
      Lumigraphics
      Legend
      November 16, 2022

      None of that matters, honestly. You have to use a workflow that fits the available tools.

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