Adobe Bridge – Full screen preview tips

Software:
Adobe Bridge 2020

  1. To get into full screen preview mode:
    Select an image and press Spacebar
  2. Use the arrow keys to navigate images in the folder
  3. Scroll the mouse wheel to zoom in-out

Note:
In full screen mode, you may see the images display soft / low resolution,
Even if the actual image files have enough resolution to fit the display.
This happens because Bridge’s cached previews were not generated at display resolution.
To fix this issue:

  1. In Edit > Preferences > Advanced:
    Check the Generate Monitor-Size Previews option
    Br
  2. In Tools > Cache >Manage Cache..:
    Select Clean Up Cache, Purge all local cache files,
    And then click Next.
    * You may have to restart the program for this to take effect
    Annotation 2020-08-17 193558

Blender – Adding a texture to an Area Light

Software:
Blender 2.82

Adding a texture to an area light can make it produce softer and more detailed highlights and an overall more organic lighting effect.

Note:
Since an Area light in Blender isn’t rendered as an actual mesh object with UV coordinates, it’s texture coordinates are parametric (see below).

Adding a texture to an Area Light:

  1. In the Area Light properties click the Use Nodes button (see image A) to initiate its node graph and allow texturing it.
  2. In the Shader Editor view (with the light selected), drop your texture to the light’s node graph and connect it to the light’s Emission node’s Color input. (see image B)
  3. Create a new Input > Geometry node, and connect it’s Parametric output to the Image Texture’s Vector input. (see image B)

A. Without a texture the Area light produces a hard flat highlight:
a

B. With the vignette texture, the Area light now has a more subtle organic effect:
* The Emission node’s Strength was increased in this case to compensate for the lower light output with the texture.
b
Related posts:

  1. Cycles Area Light pleasent surprise
  2. Cycles Area Light shader visibility