Adobe Bridge = Not my friend

donovanphotos

Hi!
I loved bridge.
I knew it front and back inside and out. Now, it's laggy, slow and unresponsive, and I spend more time restarting it and my whole mac than i do getting any work done.

My processing involved editing in lightroom, and then fixing up the little things in photoshop. I use bridge to browse the ones that need a touch up and use it to batch process file name changes. It's limited what I actually use it for.. but I haven't even been able to do that with it.

I've been looking for a stable alternative... can you make suggestions?

I keep searching the app store and google, and there seems to be lots out there, but I'd like some real world suggestions! :D . ThankS

Richard

Why not use Lightroom? I stopped using Bridge as soon as I got Lightroom. Its file management is much more powerful and it integrates nicely with Photoshop.

donovanphotos

it does? Oh lordy. Seriously?!
Can you point me in the direction of a tutorial on how to make it work?
I'm self taught in the world of lightroom, so know I'm not using all it's features, but I had no idea i was this behind!

Richard

There must be hundreds of tutorials on YouTube. You need to learn to use the Library functions to manage your workflow and file storage.

pathfinder

What version of LR are you using?

There was an update to LightRoom Classic recently and I notice a significant improvement in speed in the Library mode ( think browser window ) - Apparently Adobe has decided to let our computers use the high speed GPUs they possess in modern desktop/laptop computers.

Adobe never really tells us why things are better, but I do see a REAL increase in speed of moving through the Library pages of image displays and in using the selective editing brushes - tasks which previously really slowed by computer down

I haven't used Bridge for many years, LR is that much better - LR Classic is now version 8.4

My first suggestion would be to get your LightRoom up to the current updated version and see if that doesn't solve some of your issues.

Didn't ask what your computer environment is - processors, RAM, SSD vs HDs, etc. Suffice it to say that LightRoom is a resource hog, and really needs a fast modern well configured computer to shine when your catalog gets large, or you start to process those 60MPixel images everyone wants these days

colourbox

@donovanphotos said:
I've been looking for a stable alternative... can you make suggestions?
I keep searching the app store and google, and there seems to be lots out there, but I'd like some real world suggestions! . ThankS

I've seen some praise of NeoFinder in another photography forum, but I have no experience with it.

@pathfinder said:
There was an update to LightRoom Classic recently and I notice a significant improvement in speed in the Library mode ( think browser window ) - Apparently Adobe has decided to let our computers use the high speed GPUs they possess in modern desktop/laptop computers.

There was already a GPU option, I think added in version 7, but it was apparently only for speeding up display of the processed pixels to the screen, and didn't accelerate much else. And sometimes people turned it off because it ended up slowing down some operations or causing glitches.

Lightroom Classic 8.4 and Adobe Camera Raw 11.4, both released around a couple weeks ago, add a new GPU acceleration option where the GPU is now used in actual image processing. Personally I have seen it make a big difference in responsiveness when editing, especially high megapixel images. It should help users with 4K monitors, because of the same improved efficiency of pushing large numbers of pixels, but I don't have a 4K monitor to try that with. The new GPU option is enabled in Preferences if your graphics hardware is supported, it's a good idea to check and see if it is enabled properly. It needs a relatively recent GPU and decent amount of VRAM to make a difference. It's enabled on some of my older Macs, but their GPUs are too old and weak to take good advantage of this.

But the gains are not universal because not all features are accelerated yet. I can tell which are and which aren't, both by feel and watching the GPU usage meter. But the gains are still pretty much within the Develop module. I do not think much was supposed to be improved outside the Develop module, but I could be wrong about that.

Faster display of Library previews should have more to do with having enough extra CPU cores to render them speculatively in the background (again, check your Performance prefs, specifically "Generate Previews in Parallel"), and enough extra RAM to cache them so they can be displayed quickly. Remember that while a lower amount of RAM is fine, LR Classic prefers 12GB RAM for this type of performance caching, according to the system requirements. Also, the relatively new Embedded preview option saves LRC from having to render previews at all, for image not edited since import (it uses the preview that came from the camera). But all those Library performance enhancements were introduced some months ago, not with the latest release.

Over time, though, it's starting to add up...Lightroom is slowly getting faster (is that OK to say? "Slowly" getting faster? Time for me to go to bed...)

pathfinder

Yes, I think so too.
I was getting annoyed with just how slow LR was getting, when v 8.4 came out, and I am a much happier camper now.

I do agree that the responsiveness in editing is better, especially selective editing brushes. But I also think, feel that moving through the library with hundreds of thumbnail images on my screen is faster too. Anyway, the responsiveness makes editing less frustrating than it had been earlier in the summer.

I do have "Generate Previews in Parallel" checked, I increased my cache size from 10GB to 15 Gb since reading your post. My AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64 - 16 GB are recognized and automatically selected.

Yes, LR is slowly getting faster...... at long last!