PSE8 - Photos double-clicked in Bridge open in Preview?

Question

I had this same problem in Photoshop CS3 last year and found a solution but can't remember it in order to apply it to PSE8!!!!!
Double-clicking any image in Bridge causes the image to be opened by default in Preview. I can ctrl-click the image and select the app I want to open it with, but there must be a permanent solution.
Strangely enough, last night when I first got PSE8 it wasn't doing it ........ everything opened in PSE8. I'm just wondering what I have done to cause it to happen?
Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The Mac has always used two four character 'codes' to associate a file with its 'TYPE" and its "CREATOR." But Apple has been warning developers for a couple of years that it might change that system. Apparently, in Snow Leopard, Apple did just that. They claim they did this for better compatibility since no other file system/OS uses this very useful system, even though some could. This data has usually been in the 'resource fork' file that Windows (and its users could see but had no idea what it was for. The beauty of the old system is that two files of the same type (text, for example) could be opened by two different programs, namely the programs that created them. Quite logical, in my humble opinion. Not to Apple.
Snow Leopard now has as its first rule, to use the preset apps that Apple decided it wants to use. Text should open in TextEdit, regardless of what app created it. html should open in Safari, even though the text file was created by BBEdit. jpegs were assigned to Preview, regardless... and, despite the efforts of Bridge, that is what is probably happening. The inconsistencies you are seeing may be the ongoing battle between Bridge and Snow Leopard! Or maybe not.
Since I create web pages with BBEdit, I want that app to open any file it created. So I selected an html file and changed the info in its Get Info window and told the OS to do that with any and all html files that are double-clicked. I'd suggest you do a similar change with the jpegs/tiffs/gifs/pngs/etc. that you want to edit in Elements. You should have to edit the info in one Get Info window for each type.
Of course, you can also use the right-click/option-click and use the Contextual Menu to force the OS to use whatever you want to open any file. That probably will not work in Bridge, of course. But you can give it a try. And it will simply take longer...might as well learn new habits because we all know that Apple (and Adobe?) know what's best for us. LOL! Apple claims the new system should be used by developers, but I have seen many of them explain why it won't work. It now will depend almost entirely on the three/four character suffix text at the end of a file name. It's the beginning of the end of one of the most useful and efficient file opening systems ever created. One of the major things that made even old, pre-OS X systems so easy to use and one of the things that was so much better than any other OS, IMHO. This change is called "progress." My definition includes words like "better" and/or "easier." Apparently Apple's definition doesn't use/need/want those words. :head bash: