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Pixmonger
Participating Frequently
April 12, 2017
Question

Advice on purging the central cache in Bridge.

  • April 12, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 6190 views

I'll try to make this as simple as I can. I'm using an older version of Photoshop and its companion organizer Bridge, CS5 to be exact. I have many, many high-res jpegs on multiple drives which I access through Bridge, then tweak through Photoshop. In the last day or two the fateful message "Bridge encountered a problem and is unable to read the cache. Please try purging the central cache in cache preferences to correct the situation." OK, of course when I proceed to do so, "The cached thumbnails for all files will be deleted. Are you sure you want to continue?" pops up. Doesn't' sound good. Should I do this and what are the ramifications? I need to be able to organize and select files as Bridge allows, don't want to see everything disappear and have to somehow rebuild everything.

ps: At this point, if I simply close the window and ignore it –– things seem to work alright. Although, I did receive a warning that Bridge needed more RAM and I should restart it. I have installed extra RAM (over a year ago) 20 GB total, and things have been running OK until recently. I continue to shoot and store more pictures every week, totaling 100s of gigs. I work with a 27" iMac, OS Sierra version 10.12.4.

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    2 replies

    Sahil.Chawla
    Adobe Employee
    Sahil.Chawla
    Adobe Employee
    April 13, 2017

    Hi Pixmonger,

    Bridge optimizes cache by automatically purging the stale cache items when your app is idle. By default, the purge duration is set as 30 days. This means that any cache item which is older than 30 days is considered as stale and hence purged by Bridge.

    However, you can customize the purge duration and set any value between 1 day and 180 days. You set the purge duration in the Cache Preferences dialog.

    If the preference for purging cache is not set and the cache has stale items, then sometime after launching the app, Bridge prompts you with the dialog shown below.

    It is normal and you can go ahead and purge the cache.

    Regards,

    Sahil

    R
    Ronald Keller
    Legend
    April 12, 2017

    No images will be deleted; it's the thumbnails that will be  deleted. Which means Bridge will have to rebuild them when you visit a folder for the first time. This can take quite some time with large folders. Other than that no harm will be done.

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      PixmongerAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      April 13, 2017

      Thanks for the info Ronald,

      I really appreciate it. That’s kinda what I thought, that of course the original file wouldn't become affected. But, as you point out, you start over from scratch generating images to scroll through, folder by folder. Would the rebuilding be comparable to the first time you check out what you have on a card just plugged in? If that’s the case, I don’t experience that long a delay before the frames come into view.

      Does this need that Bridge has to purge the general cache correlate with a photo increase in the system? I must have reached a tipping point, never been confronted with this before. It has been acting skittish lately prior to these messages. Maybe it will work fine by starting over and not having to store the vast number of photo thumbnails I have, until I get to this point again by eventually reviewing every folder where they’re kept.

      Brad

      P
      PixmongerAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      April 13, 2017

      Brad,

      I'm no expert in these matters so maybe this will help you decide:

      Set preferences to manage and optimize the Adobe Bridge CC cache size

      If Bridge is shutting down frequently I assume there is something wrong indeed. Maybe purging the cache will resolve this issue but I don't know. Let's hope it does...


      Again many thanks,

      I’ll look into this link. I’ll have to mark this answered somewhere in the system.

      I did purge the cache and so far so good. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to do something I’d regret.

      Brad –– aka Pixmonger (too many photos, not enough time, nor RAM, nor fail-safe storage. Maybe film was better; I’d never go out and shoot 1,000 frames on a morning lark.)

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