Or, "How many ways can you screw it up?"
Let's look at some of the "enhancements" that Adobe has made from Bridge 2022 in Bridge 2023 (for Windows).
- Editing the description field. It USED to be that you could type [Ctrl] + [Enter] to commit a change. No more! Adobe has "improved" it by making it seemingly impossible to commit input via the keyboard, and making you move to the mouse (because evewybody likes mousies) and click on the tick icon near the bottom.
- Clipboard integration. What is going on with that? You can select a description or a set of keywords and bang away on [Ctrl]+[C] until your fingers bleed and it WILL NOT pick the content up into the clipboard. The only way it works is if you select Copy from the right click menu, because once again, evewybody likes mousies and this software wasn't designed, if I can use that word, for adults. This also results in a ridiculous number of visits from the incredibly annoying "Apply Metadata?" dialog, which you can tell Bridge not to show... but the consequences of doing so would not be appealing, since the answer will vary depending on the circumstances. The use of Control+C has only been a feature of Windows for the last 30 years; why should we expect Adobe to follow it when they have so much {beam of light from above and sound of awe} AI code to write? It's not like Adobe should get the basics right first.
- Doing The Keyword Jump. If you search for a keyword, but the one you're after is later in the list, you hit the [next] button. You find the one that you're after and check it. You are ABOUT to check the relevant sub-keywords underneath it, bit no... someone on the Bridge design team decided that it would be a rooly, rooooooly good idea to have you JUMP BACK TO THE PREVIOUS instance of the keyword as soon as you check the box, because, well, it's just obvious that you must be done, er, isn't it? (Hint: NO, it is NOT. Checking a keyword has one meaning, and one meaning only; I want that keyword added to the image. It does NOT mean "Add it and move to another keyword".)
- Keyword Wheel Of Fortune. I've just created a keyword. I have checked the keyword. There's the checkbox, completely checked and everything. Does it appear in the list of keywords for the image? It does not. If I click off the photo and back on it, is the new keyword still checked? No it is not. If I RE check the box, is it in the keyword list NOW? Why yes, yes it is. But what sort of quality control (or lack thereof) allows there to be a disconnect between the data that has been input, and the data that has been written?
- Mystery Multiples: Does anyone at Adobe want to tell me how the State/Province field can be showing "(Multiple Values)"... when I have ONE, and ONLY ONE, image selected? Anybody? Anyone at all?
- Mystery displays: So... why am I seeing a few pixels of "chequerboard" transparency around the thumbnails of some of my .psds... transparency which does not in fact exist in the images?
- Persistence? Who Needs It? Oh, this is the "best" one yet. Let's say that you have a tree of sub-keywords that goes "Vessel", under which is "Cruise Liner", under which is "Cruise Ship". Under that you have the keywords for all of the cruise ships in your galleries, neatly ordered. Then you think "You know what? "Cruise LINER is a misnomer. I'll move "Cruise Ship" and all of its sub-keywords to sit right under Vessel. So you drag it. Just like you could in past versions.
- And every. Single. Sub-Keyword - every SINGLE one of them - turns into that stupid italicised font that indicates a non-persistent keyword. Do an export now, and all of those keywords are GONE. You have to go through and re-mark them as persistent one, by one, by one, because gods forbid that Bridge should allow us to select multiple keywords at the one time. WHO, exactly, on the Bridge design team decided that if we MOVE a keyword, we want to make it and ALL of its sub-keywords non-persistent? And what, exactly, made them think it was a good idea? Here's a concept that works; if I want to remove sub-keywords from my tree I WOULD DELETE THEM. I don't need Adobe to just decide that hey, the next time you move computers and export all of your keywords to ensure that they're saved, I'll just dump a few dozen that you've spent literally years creating a structure for. This unbelievably ridiculous feature doesn't exist in Bridge 2022. There, if you drag the keywords, they stay persistent.
- Who came up with the brilliant idea of reducing the amount of metadata displayed in Slideshow view to, wait for it... the filename only? No longer can you get metadata and exposure displays. Yes, Adobe, who DOESN'T like feature reduction aside from, well, pretty much everybody?
The Good
There is one whole thing that has improved. One. Having the Description box more expandable is a positive. Being able to use standard navigation keys to move to the end of it (rather than jumping out of the field as Bridge 2022 did) is a massive positive. But frankly, with 2023 being this much of a mess, I'm going to re-export my updated keywords and go back to 2022. Hopefully I won't lose too many.
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