Today’s Question: Is there a way to get a histogram in Bridge? I feel my several requests on this to Adobe have fallen on deaf ears. Or is there something else to use instead of a histogram in Bridge to evaluate exposure? For example, [without a histogram] I could not easily choose which exposure from a bracketed set was exposed to the right and did not have slightly blown out highlights.
Tim’s Quick Answer: Adobe Bridge does not include a histogram panel, but you could select multiple images and open them in Camera Raw to evaluate the histogram there.
More Detail: Adobe Bridge is a popular tool for organizing photos, especially for photographers who are primarily using Photoshop to optimize their photos and who do not want to use Lightroom Classic (or the other versions of Lightroom). However, the absence of a histogram panel in Bridge can create a little bit of a workflow challenge, such as when you want to evaluate the exposure of several bracketed exposures.
While you can’t view a histogram directly in Bridge, you can do so in Camera Raw. If you select one or more photos in Bridge and then double-click, by default the images will open in Photoshop within the Camera Raw dialog. However, you can work more efficiently (especially if you simply want to view the histogram without editing a photo) by turning on the option to edit with Camera Raw via Bridge rather than Photoshop.
To edit with Camera Raw directly in Bridge rather than launching Photoshop, go to the General tab of the Preferences dialog in Adobe Bridge and turn on the “Double-Click Edits Camera Raw Settings in Bridge” checkbox. With this option enabled you can select multiple photos and double-click one of the selected photos to open all of them in Camera Raw. You can switch among the photos on the filmstrip in Camera Raw, evaluating the histogram for each. You can then click the Done button to return to Bridge, or select one or more images on the filmstrip in Camera Raw and click the Open button to open them in Photoshop.
While this process isn’t as efficient as it would be if Bridge simply included a histogram, it is still a relatively streamlined workflow overall. That’s especially true if you’ll ultimately want to open an image in Photoshop after evaluating the histogram.
Note that my comprehensive course on “Adobe Bridge for Photographers” can help you learn to use Bridge to organize your photos. This course is included in the GreyLearning Ultimate Bundle at no additional cost, but is also available as a standalone course here:
https://www.greylearning.com/courses/adobe-bridge-for-photographers
