Want Adobe Bridge for free?

Dirty little secret #4,512: Adobe wants you to have Bridge. In fact, they want you to have it so much, they are giving it away. They just forget to tell you.

First, a little backstory: before Macworld, I needed Dreamweaver CS3 installed on our family MacBook Pro for the two-day Power Tools Training Session (can't wait for it to be posted on MacworldEncore.com, for free. Yes, there's some sarcasm there). Rather than hunting down my install disks for CS3, which I had used to install the CS3 suite on my dual-G4, and grabbed the DW CS3 30-trial from Adobe's web site to get me by through the show.

Well, Abode doesn't just install Dreamweaver CS3 on your machine. They install Device Central CS3 (basically, cell-phone mockup windows to see how your web page layouts will work on (read as: be mangled by) mobile devices), and Adobe Bridge CS3, because, well, EVERY Adobe app installs it.

So today, I'm working on the laptop, and decide to check on Dreamweaver. As I guessed, I am now out of the 30-day radius of activation, so I get the "pay to play" serial entry screen, and subsequently turn it off. However, just for kicks, I decide to launch Bridge CS3, and, lo and behold, it starts up without issue. I can view files (including full-res previews of my CS2 and CS documents, which is why you should care about this post, especially if you haven't made the CS3 jump), add metadata, basic batch-functionality, etc. It's like the "free gift" for bothering to run the demo, but they forget to let you know ahead of time.

I have to assume this is intentional, because ever since absorbing Macromedia, and their onerous phone-home activation scheme to piss off, well, casual piracy, Adobe has never, ever let you use their apps without running the gauntlet. But they want everyone using Bridge (in fact, it's a major part of nearly every Adobe app training session these days). But it boggles my mind that they don't advertise this, if it truly is a "get Bridge on every machine possible" strategy.

Well, either way, there you go. Install a demo (probably ANY demo will do it), and get Bridge CS3 for free.

Enjoy!