Use Your iPhoto Library In Adobe Bridge
When it comes to photo editing, iPhoto’s capabilities are not up to par with Bridge or Aperture. Thanks to Apple making Aperture it’s quite easy to import your existing iPhoto library. With Adobe Bridge, the import process is less user-friendly, but in the end you will have all of your pictures from iPhoto easily accessible from Bridge.
- Open up the Pictures folder in Finder.
- Locate the iPhoto Library file.
- Right-click on it and choose Show Package Contents.
- Inside the contents, locate “Originals” and “Modified”.
- Hold down Shift and select both folders.
- Right-click on choose Make Alias.
- Drag both the aliases into the Pictures folder in Finder.
- Create a new folder and place both the aliases in the folder.
- Now, open up Bridge.
- In the sidebar you should see a Pictures folder.
- Double-click it and open the folder that contains the aliases you made.
- Now all you do is browse through the folders in chronological order until you find the picture you wanted.
- Note: any changes you make using Camera Raw will not show up in iPhoto.
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November 6th, 2008 at 8:40 am
I enjoyed your comment on using the iPhoto Library in Adobe Bridge, and found it very useful indeed. It certainly does help in making the iPhoto library more readily accessible.
Keep up the good work! I also like the clean look of your site, BTW. You’re a Mac Genius? It shows…
November 6th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Thanks Jeff. It’s taken me a while to get the hang of designing a WordPress blog, but it was worth it.
As an outdoor photographer, I find it necessary to use Bridge for color correction. Don’t get me wrong about iPhoto, I love it for cataloging my pictures.
I’m glad you like the site, it was time for a change.
Thanks again,
Mason
April 9th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
I recently updated iPhoto 6 to version 8 in iLife ’09. When I went to Bridge in Photoshop Elements 6, all my previous file extensions have been changed from .jpg to .approject. These files do not open as a picture. I can open them with iPhoto for editing purposes and can save to any extension as before but I don’t understand why I can’t see jpegs in Bridge. Adobe has been no help as they point the finger at Apple and Aperture (which makes some sense). Have you encountered this?
Thanks,
Russ
April 10th, 2009 at 6:12 am
Russ, fortunately, I have not encountered this problem yet. When I wrote this article I was using Bridge CS3 and iPhoto ’08. I need you to clarify where the “.approject” files are located. Only the Aperture.app can create “.approject” files, so I’m a little bit confused with the way you described your situation. If you want to try and extract the images from the “.approject” files, try using the File Juicer app.
Thanks,
Mason
August 2nd, 2009 at 3:47 am
Thanks for the advice.
I have a problem in that I do not seem to have any folders named originals or modified in the folder you referred to. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks and kind regards,
Philipa
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Philipa,
If you are using the newest version of iPhoto, then it will be different. Go to the Pictures folder in Finder and right-click on iPhoto Library. Then choose Show Package Contents.
You should see the Original and Modified folders in the Finder window that pops up.
Thanks,
Mason
August 4th, 2009 at 12:31 am
Hi Mason,
Thanks for your reply. I have iPhoto ’08; is it possible to access images from this version in Bridge?
Thanks again for your help.
Philipa
August 4th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Yes. It should work just fine.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
What? Right-clicking is supposed to work with the iMac mouse? I have had it for 3 months now and the mouse never let me right-click. I thought it was just something Apple had missed! I sorely miss right-clicking. Could I have a faulty mouse then? I am trying to figure out the best way to get my iPhoto pics into Bridge.
October 29th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Anna,
You should no problem right-clicking with the mouse that came with your iMac. Assuming you are using a Mighty Mouse, you can set it up in System Preferences to right-click.
To answer your second question about the best way to get your iPhoto pictures into Bridge—I need to first know if you want to completely switch over to Bridge or use both.
If you want to use both applications (one to edit, one to manage) then I suggest you just create an “alias” folder as I wrote in my tutorial.
Email me on the Contact page if you want more help.
Thanks,
Mason
December 27th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Is this the best method to use if I am trying to completely switch over to Bridge? All of my pictures are currently saved through iPhoto, but I want to switch to Bridge to organize and use Elements 8 to edit.
Thanks!
December 28th, 2009 at 7:33 am
Rachel,
Use iPhoto’s export feature instead.
Select all the photos you want to export and then go to File > Export.
In the File Export window, change the export options:
Kind: Choose a file format for your exported images from the Format pop-up menu.
“Current” exports the photo in its current format. If you imported a RAW-format photo and then edited it in iPhoto, the photo is saved as a JPEG file, so the photo will be exported as a JPEG file. “Original” exports the photo as it was originally imported into iPhoto, before editing.
If you choose JPEG format, choose the quality of the JPEG file from the pop-up menu. The higher the quality is, the bigger the photo is, so if you’re sending the images via email, you may want to choose Low quality so that the email is sent and received more quickly.
If you choose JPEG or TIFF, select the “Titles and keywords” checkbox if you want the titles and keywords to be exported with the photos. For the same formats, select the “Location information” checkbox if you want the photo locations exported with the photos.
Size: For email or web use, choose Small or Medium, depending on your connection speed. For higher-resolution printing, choose Large or Full Size, the exact size of the actual picture.
If necessary, select Custom to scale images to a specific size by specifying a maximum width and height.
File Name: Choose whether to export photos in sequence, or by their filenames, iPhoto titles, or album name.
If you choose Sequential, type the word you want to use as the prefix for the number sequence. For example, if you want to identify all the photos as part of a surfing sequence, you could type “Surf” in the “Prefix for Sequential” field. This is optional, so you can choose to leave the field blank.
Click Export.
Choose a location for the photos you’re exporting, and then click OK.
It’s a good idea to create a folder to receive your exported photos.
Thanks,
Mason
January 22nd, 2010 at 6:35 am
Thanks for great tip.
Maybe just a silly question, but I’m just curious.
I don’t understand why some of the iPhoto pictures get duplicated into the Modified folder, but are still in the Originals folder?
I tested by editing a photo in iPhoto and logically expected the revised picture to appear in Modified, but that didn’t happen.
I guess main question is whether I just automatically go into Originals within Bridge and ignore Modified?
Thanks!
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:01 pm
DesB,
The purpose of accessing your iPhoto library with Bridge is so you can edit them in Bridge. When you start editing in iPhoto—as you have noticed—things get a little out of place. My best recommendation is to stick with editing the images only in Bridge and use iPhoto for managing them. Let me know if you need any help. Also, changes you make within Bridge only show in Bridge, not iPhoto.
Thanks,
Mason
February 7th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Hi Mason,
Thanks for taking time for all the tips, I have a question please.
If you go through all the steps making the aliases and then make the adjustments in PSE 8 will these changes be reflected in iPhoto or will there be duplicate photos, one changed and then the original? And if this is not changed in iPhoto do we have to then import back into iPhoto. Sorry for the long question and thanks again.
February 7th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Harold,
This is an excellent question. When you’ve made changes in Photoshop Elements, it should prompt you to save your changes in the Save As window. Make sure you are not clicking the Saving As option, but rather just clicking Save. If it prompts you with a “Replace” option, go ahead at do that. iPhoto will show these changes. However, any changes you make in Adobe Bridge, will only show in Adobe Bridge.
Thanks,
Mason
April 13th, 2010 at 10:16 am
Hi Mason,
Thanks so much for these instructions. I have a quick question for you. Within my Originals alias file, my folder system seems to be a bit wonky (technical term
). For instance, my photos from April 4th are located in the April 6th folder. Is this a common problem and is there a way to fix it?
Many thanks,
Elizabeth
April 13th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Once an alias is created in iPhoto, are new imports added to that alias folder also?
April 21st, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Jeremy,
An alias folder refers to the original folder when it displays its contents.
- Mason
April 21st, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Elizabeth,
The only way an alias folder works is by referring to the Originals folder. Double-check the structure of the Originals folder for any errors like the ones you mentioned. Otherwise, this is not a common problem to be occurring.
- Mason
July 6th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Hello there,
I followed your steps above to make an alias & put them into a folder in my Pictures folder but my photos are not all there! I have checked Modified alias & Original alias in BR. I have even gone into iPhoto, copied down the filename of the photo (many of them) & searched BR but: Nothing to display. I see lots of my photos in there, but I could see that I was missing some, therefore the search. Can you help me?
Thank you, I love your site…you are my guru!
July 10th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Mary,
Usually when you edit images in another program aside from iPhoto or Bridge, this will mess up the file structure. At this point, your best bet is to re-import the photos into iPhoto (it will automatically detect duplicates). I hope this works for you.
Thanks,
Mason