My friend Will wrote to ask me why the word “reject” was showing under his photo in Bridge.
Will wrote that he was using Adobe Bridge to edit photos from a recent shoot. The red “reject” was under some photos for an unknown reason.
Solution
I’ve used Bridge since it came out in 2005 and I’ve never seen the “reject.” I remember, though, hearing Lightroom users talk about rejecting photos versus just deleting them.
I checked the Settings in Bridge and found there was an option to “reject” when labeling images. See the screen capture below. Option + Delete key gives “reject.”
My Method
I don’t use the reject option when editing images. While editing a batch of images in Adobe Camera Raw, I enlarge each image to 100% and give it a rating. 5 stars is an amazing, great image; 4 stars is a really strong image; 3 stars is average and what’s expected; 2 stars is slightly blurred but maybe worth keeping; 1 star is not worth keeping; no stars is a delete.
Below is a screen capture of Bridge after I’ve edited all of the images as a batch in Adobe Camera Raw and rated them.
I’ll keep the images with 5, 4, or 3 stars. The images with less than three stars will be deleted. There’s no need to keep lesser quality images in the catalogue.
The star system also helps me select the best image later when I’m searching images in the Lightroom catalogue or Library. I can immediately go to the 5 or 4 star images versus looking at each image in a series again.
Great question from Will. It was fun finding the answer to his problem. I hope the answer and other information might help others.
If you’d like to learn how to edit photos in Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw, sign up for one of my online classes. I offer Introduction of Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom and Elements every six to eight weeks.
Questions? Please feel free post below. Thanks for reading!
Kathy Adams Clark 