Bridge: Release as a Standalone application

You have 100,000 images,but dont need photoshop? Personally i have never been that dazzled by bridge,but its what i use anyway because its free,so i would not buy it as an extra item. I have quite a few images on my computer as well, but bridge can still act quirky from time to time in my experience.On my work machine,bridge will randomly freeze while trying to move images to another folder,so i force quit it 3 or 4 times till it miraculously works as it should.

What version of Photoshop/Bridge are you running, Donald?  From your description it would sound like you're on CS3. 

Here at work it says 4.0.4.2. the work one is the one that acts the strangest with bridge. At home i run into issues with simple drag and drop of folders,which i know is not related to this bridge question. I recently looked at the file info on my two external drives,and expected the file sizes to be identical to the source,but it was 30 gigs different,so i had to go folder by folder and many had half the files gone. Personally i think its 10.6.8 that has issues with copying,but at least i noticed it. I mention that because i saw the other thread asking about file verification programs.

I always move files around in the Finder, not Bridge.  Any changes you make in the Finder are immediately reflected in Bridge (and vice versa, of course; but I trust the Finder a lot more).

Donald Reese wrote:

 

Here at work it says 4.0.4.2

´That's CS5.

david iushewitz wrote:

 

…see if  there was  other interest in a Bridge

separate program or APP ?…

For me it's a moot point, David.  I practically live inside Photoshop.

David,

BTW, It's Mac for Macintosh, not "MAC", which is an acronym that can stand for any one of several things, none of which has anything to do with Macintosh whatsoever. 

Ramon, Just to be clear,I am on CS5 on both machines.I usually copy and move from the finder as well, so this missing file thing is baffling. Occasionally i am copying a set of images and it seems like doing random other tasks interupts the copy procedure for some reason. This 10.6.8 has a variety of wierd glitches, like my mail not alerting me for days and then it will work for a bit and then revert to being quiet. Apple has many people complaining about the same things i see.

David,

It seems that you are searching for a DAM (digital assets management) application, which Bridge is NOT.

Bridge is nothing more than an evolution of the Photoshop Browser, which is exactly what Bridge was in its early iterations, nothing more than an image browser.

It was then adopted on an ad hoc basis as a tool to link files among the artificially lumped together applications sold as "creative suites", a sheer marketing tool.  In reality, the point applications are developed independently and separately by Adobe teams that are not in the same building, not even in the same city, state or country, and with little communication among them.  Adobe has never dedicated enough resources to the further development of Bridge.  The result is a rather hobbled utility that is far, very far from being a robust asset management program.

For a truly capable, robust digital asset management application you have to look for something like Canto Cumulus, Portfolio, etc.

No, I would not pay even $1 for Bridge if it wasn't bundled for free with the suite applications.  It is definitely not worth it.

Now that Adobe is moving to a subscription paradigm, I see even less of a future for Bridge sold as a separate application.

I understand your preferring Bridge over Organizer, but that's not really a compliment to Bridge.  Ps Elements is an overpriced application by at least $80 or so.  That's how little I think of Elements.  So saying that Bridge is better than Elements is not saying much about Bridge.

Now two suggestions aimed at you personally, David:

1.— Please don't use "texting" abbreviations like u for 'you' or ur for 'you are' in these forums.  It makes your posts a little harder to understand.  Bear in mind that these are international forums which are read by professionals from many countries, many of which are not native English speakers, including yours truly.

2.– Quit typing "MAC" for Mac.  As noted above, it's Mac for Macintosh, not "MAC", which is an acronym that can stand for any one of several things, none of which has anything to do with Macintosh whatsoever. 

Message was edited by: Tai Lao

Donald,

I understand your reservations about Bridge.  For file management I wouldn't trust it at all.  As for Snow Leopard, OS 10.6.x, it won't even run on my machine, and I've stayed with Tiger 10.4.11—even though I also have a a separate Leopard boot volume, because Tiger is much, much snappier than Leopard on my machine.

Bridge is a digital asset manger - DAM. Bridge's primary use is for managing Metadata of hundreds of images within asset libraries which is  a VERY important function for image managers that you have obviously overlooked. Titles, descriptions, keywords, authorship, copyright usage rights & contact info among others things. The batch file functions are also not to be overlooked as a commonly used tool for image asset mangers such as Photography & Illustrator reps and newspaper photo desk managers. It does utilize the small previews of formats such as multipage InDesign, illustrator & PDF files as well as larger previews of pixel based files in the preview window. I think your analysis of Bridge was based on your limited scope of usage of the aplication.

Try editing Metadata in the Finder... Yes I can write a script to run batch file naming in the Finder but I wouldn't ask a rep to do that.

Yes there are other tools available but Bridge is more widely available.

I have developed a Javascript plugin works for Bridge and InDesign for managing and fixing links, providing a versioning system and synchronising a huge tree of files among users connected to a cloud service like a Dropbox. It works on Mac. Try it and help me with your opinion.

Tree Shade | SourceForge.net