Adobe Bridge 2023 - Why it is one of the WORST alleged upgrades ever, with details

Report · Sep 05, 2023

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.

Report · Aug 13, 2025

100%
it's been years now and so much feedback has been provided on these forums, and it still performs like crap. Wonderful job, Adobe.

Report · Aug 13, 2025

Have you considered moving up to Bridge 2025? 2023 was a long time ago in development terms and there have been many improvements, bug fixes etc.

Report · Aug 14, 2025

Though I still don't trust Adobe as far as I can metaphorically throw it, it does seem that they have sorted out MOST of the issues I described above in Bridge 2025.

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,
- Ctrl+Enter still doesn't work. [Tab] does, though. I can live with that.

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.
- This appears to have been fixed.

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".)
- This infuriating behaviour still exists.

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.
- They seem to have fixed this. Newly created keywords are now applied correctly.

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?
- I can't say for certain that this is fixed, but I've yet to see it in Bridge 2025. But of course, the day ain't over yet.

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?
- Same as above.

Persistence? Who Needs It? Oh, this is the "best" one yet. Let's say that you have a tree of sub-keywords... 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.
- This was the deal-breaker for me when it came to 2023. Keywords are a critical part of my workflow. Not because I need to search them with Bridge, because when you have a lot of photos across multiple storage drives, Bridge couldn't find its own backside with both hands and a flashlight. But I need to tag them so that ACDSee, which actually knows how to search efficiently, can find them. Unfortunately with the use of metadata templates, Bridge is still the least worst option for tagging photos so I need a structure where I can quickly find related keywords to apply, and I need it to not be randomly corrupted. Thankfully in Bridge 2025 I've been able to drag around groups of keywords without the stupid non-persistent italics appearing. It LOOKS like they have fixed this, though I'll need some more convincing on that point before committing to Bridge 2025.

One caution for anyone who is upgrading, though... don't trust Bridge 2025 to correctly import your past settings. Export your keywords list from the old version, then import it into Bridge 2025. Wherever it got the list that it auto-imported from, it was out of date.

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.
- Thankfully they fixed this as well. Review mode remains useless, but at least we have useful exposure data in Slideshows again.

Are there any downsides on 2025? It seems to be much slower at rendering images. Not unusably so, but I find a lot of "stutter" before I can see the image.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the tabbed windows. I'm prepared to play around them and see now that the keywords don't seem to be an issue.

Report · Aug 14, 2025

RE the dragging of keywords and them becomming italicised (non persistent).

I experienced this problem but discovered that this only seems to happen if you have images selected containing the said keywords. If I ensure I have no images selected at all then the dragging works without issue.

Report · Aug 15, 2025

RE the dragging of keywords and them becomming italicised (non persistent).
I experienced this problem but discovered that this only seems to happen if you have images selected containing the said keywords. If I ensure I have no images selected at all then the dragging works without issue.

By @Erik Bloodaxe

You're right, it still does it in those circumstances.

Gods, what WOEFUL programming.

I'm going to stick with 2022 for now. The main up side of 2025 is the way it handles large fields like Description, but other than that there's no up side and all it takes is to forget just one time about the "no selection" requirement to screw up our keyword trees. It's too much risk for too little reward.

Report · Aug 14, 2025

2025 is considerably better than 2023 but I still use v2022 in production. I was on the pre-release team and reported dozens of bugs, many of which have never been fixed, and recommended numerous improvements based on heavy daily use, again most of which never were done.

Bridge could and should be a LOT better than it is currently.

Report · Aug 15, 2025

2025 is considerably better than 2023 but I still use v2022 in production.
...
Bridge could and should be a LOT better than it is currently.

By @ExUSA

I'm going to stick with 2022 for the time being too. I really feel that last sentence. Were it not for metadata templates, I'm not sure I'd still be using Bridge at all.