Bridge 2023 and 2024 is practically unusable

[NetPixel Studio]

Dear folks in the Bridge team! It's beyond understanding how you don't realize, these versions of Bridge are a big failure!? It's like an early beta version. But already 2 years in beta...

Compared to version 12, the newer versions have numerous bugs, the UI is almost non-responsive, etc. The overall feel of the software is like a bunch of libraries put together in a hurry, by a student.

Annoying things:

- The window often misses the clicks. Yes, clicking in the window, too often does nothing. Tested on multiple computers. (I have to connect this bug with the annoying sticky hand tool bug where the mouse button release is missed, making the hand tool and the lasso tool unusable in photoshop, and Lightroom Classic is affected as well with this sticky hand tool).

- Scrolling is painfully slow, to the point of unusable. I see, the scrollbars were reinvented, just to break the things, because there are absolutely no benefits having some super minimalist fancy scrollbars. Instead of fixing the bugs, the team was busy reinventing the wheel.

- Search is slow. I'm typing the file/folder name, then the window stays, doing nothing, then after some time passes it jumps to the target. But careful, because if something isn't focused well, search isn't working.

- ...

- Countless UI glitches, like awful blue focus outlines, bright white title bars of windows, forgotten menu separators, etc. Even amateur software writers care about these.

- Countless other issues, mentioned by other members in this forum.

I had to reinstall v12, that's the last usable version.

About refunds: due to a non-working software and broken features, do we have a refund?

[DonJohnston]

This is what my Metadata field for keywords looks like in Bridge 2024. So much useless space! No ability to modify, like previous versions (2022)

Don Johnston

[Erik Bloodaxe]

"No ability to modify"

There is - you could make this panel wider by pointing to the right hand edge and dragging the handle.

Might help a little.

Alternatively create your own workspace with a much bigger Metadata panel (and don't forget to save it.)

[jdf28]

I agree. Scrolling is terrible. I want my 2022 back!

[marionr]

I totally agree. After having spent hours, days and weeks exploring the promise of Adobe Bridge I find it seriously lacking. After repeated tries on my own to export my starred images without downloading the entire card of 5000k+ photosand painstakingly starring the chose ones it repeatedly dismisses the star and downloads the entire card defeating the purpose of trying to not fill my hard drive with unwanted files. It is USELESS and I have lost time Icannot get back. Does anyine from Adobe read this. Just to be certain I once again called Adobe and after three hours with an Adobe representative his determination was it's not possible to export to LrC.

[Lumigraphics]

I use Bridge at work in a production workflow for product photography. I'm still on 2022 because the two recent versions are unusable. Its like the dev team never heard of either Visual Studio or XCode and they are using some crummy internal cross-platform toolkit for even basic stuff like windows and menus. There are glaring bugs, UI mistakes, misfeatures, and general sloppiness everywhere. How many bugs did I report in PR that still haven't been fixed or are even worse? A lot...

There was so much opportunity given that this was a rewrite, and what you came up with is worthless. Bridge 2022 gets a C- grade from me, 2023 gets an F, 2024 gets a D-.

[NetPixel]

The latest versions of Bridge is clearly a bad example of a software house product as "To have something". Look at other image managers, like FastStone, XnView, ACDSee, etc., how smooth is the experience using those, everything is working as expected, everything is common sense, etc.
I just don't get it, for example this scroll speed issue is packed in the production release of the software and it's beyond understanding, how is that nobody notices, it's SLOOW. Yet they are happy and they advertise Bridge 14 as something exceptional...

[Swati Agarwal]

Hi,

The latest Beta build 14.0.1.128 has fix for this issue along with few other performance optimisations and bug fixes.
For a complete list of fixes available in the Beta build, please refer to the community post : 
https://community.adobe.com/t5/bridge-discussions/adobe-bridge-beta-is-now-available-14-0-1-128/td-p...

Kindly try this build and share your feedback.
 
Regards,
Bridge Team

[NetPixel Studio]

@Swati Agarwal I downloaded the latest beta version and I can confirm that the scroll speed has returned to its normal state. For the moment I am still using Bridge v12 (12.0.4.286) on my production workstations since it's fast and free of those newly introduced UI/UX glitches. Can your IT team re-analyze that v12 iteration of Bridge to see/feel the real difference? A question in parathesis: it was really necessary to rewrite the whole thing?

[Bluemoods]

Hi guys from the Bridge team! How stupid I was to focus on USB-cable as the reason for all kinds of trouble.. My trust into Adobe as such a great Software builder was limitless. But now I see that there are similar problems encountered by many others. This will let me sleep better, since I'm not alone anymore in my frustration, sadness and anger (because of so many lost hours for nothing - but I'm not alone anymore). Really, I did not think a second of the possibility, that Bridge isn't working properly, and so I could not solve any problem. I am a software developer myselve, and my customers would not accept such outcome. Not at all. So, whats the plan?

[ironthing]

Cannot even use just get a flickeing and an "ERROR". then it closes down

[Klaus5F8D]

Hello NPS,

I don't se any of your problems!

Are you sure? Is it possible that something is wrong with your machine or need of more RAM/faster processor? or corrupted Adobe apps.

Here everything works just fine . No problems at all and none of the ones you mentioned.

Love Bridge! Never had a problem, except getting familiar with some changes (2024 now)

Hope you figure it out.

Cheers

[polyxo]

Hi @Klaus5F86, great that performance is flawless on your end! But please read a little more before making suggestions.

Stronger hardware often does not help, if Bridge 13/14 struggles. Here is a report (in a German forum) by someone who reported performance troubles and was advised to upgraded his machine. He then built a very powerful Desktop machine. The result: No change. 

The forum is full of reports on performance issues, also by experienced users, running powerful machines. Just create a folder with a few thousand images and start filtering by any image attribute in the filter panel and see how this goes...

[Klaus5F8D]

Hi polyxo,

thanks for your comments.

By no means do I question or daubt the problems that some experience(d), but let's be honest ... some!

No, I do not work with several thousand image in a folder ... but with hundreds.

Even though I don't have the answer to the issue(s), it has to be something else than plainly

a bad product since most have no problems.

Yes, I had problems in the past, but ALL got resolved and were always my own fault.

In the end it's simply unfair and a shortcut to blame the product since the majority of users worldwide do not experience these problems and are very happy with Bridge.

Cheers, in hopes all turns out ok for you.

[Lumigraphics]

I drive Bridge harder than most people ever even think of. I'm a working pro photographer and use it in production for product photography at an automotive supplier.

Right now, as I type this, I'm trying to update my master image folder that has (in subfolders) close to 80,000 [now that its working correctly, about 90,000] images. I'm checking the multiple copies of each (I keep different sizes, and have a copy of most with text overlaid) for consistency. Performance is terrible on a 2019 MacBook Pro, even with everything on the internal SSD. I used Bridge for years on a higher-end Windows PC and it was awful there, too. I just had a whole folder of PSD files, my last project (updating text overlays on about 16,000 images) that wouldn't show up. I had to purge the cache three times before I got it working. That's just ugly IMHO.

I use Bridge in main because it is scriptable, I suppose if I learned Lua I could use Lightroom Classic, and because its part of the CC subscription. I have a LOT of Photoshop, Bridge, and Excel scripts that I rely on to do my job.

I was in the Bridge pre-release program and got fed up with reporting hundreds of stupid bugs plus never seeing real-world improvements that I desperately needed. The developers listened to people wanting a tabbed UI and botched that instead of fixing performance and usability.

It might work ok for you but for some of us, its a dog. Pure and simple.

[Klaus5F8D]

That's a lot of workload!!

I do not deal with quantities like that - Bridge under stress? 🙂 

You're using bridge on a mega level and I have no comparison.

However, it works fine for me.

I hope the Adobe people listen to you!!

All the best!

[Ajwoernicki]

Hi, there. What most Windows users don't realize is that we have benefitted from crazy speeds from like, Ever. From the lightweight  DOS to our fantastic chips, we rule. Now, about Mac software: single-threaded. Imagine a corridor in a house for 5 people that's only wide enough for one individual to pass through at a time. And the corridor might be twisty, and there are few places to wait if someone is going in the other direction.  Lots of these design correspondences were ported to nonMac machines. Oops. As for the current performance and UI issues: poor quality IT software and design seem to be proliferating. I attribute that to the inexperienced, and often lazy, smart alecs with CS Masters degrees who seem to be pushing out software that has not been through any kind of a Beta. I think the word "test" has been obliterated from the Software Development Process vocab. So there could be a switch error in Bridge in machines with particular configs...including software as well as hardware.  Fear of contamination is most probably the reason very little foreign software is allowed to exist in Mac configs. 

Probably more mud than clear water here, I  know. I feel the pain too.

[Lumigraphics]

I'm sorry but that was completely incoherent. Did you have something to say about Bridge?

[Ajwoernicki]

I know: linear thinkers have a hard time following when I put in all the context. Bridge: is excellent. It gives you a nice visual of your working folders. It is much nicer than the disorganized mess you get from file apps. 

[NetPixel Studio]

@Klaus5F8D I think, there are 2 scenarios: either you want to bring positiveness to this thread, either you just simply don't see the UI/UX glitches of the newest Bridge versions... Nothing personal, BTW, but I accept that there is such a thing "this is the way it is".
Now, being a software developer, I can tell that there is a so called "universal taste" which is reflected in every software, such as mobile phone OS, earlier versions of Adobe software and all other software in the domain. For example take this slow scroll speed. There is a setting in the OS (Windows here) which controls the scroll speed; Bridge completely ignores it and it implements its own scroll method via its own scrollbars. It's simply incredible to me that you just don't realize, there is something wrong with the scrolling speed when going through long lists...
Another thing is the overall sluggish response of the interface. Regarding the CPU and memory quantity of today's machines, Bridge must be lightning fast compared to older versions. But we experience more and more sluggishness as versions increase (Photoshop, Acrobat, Illustrator, Indesign is included here as well).

Yet another thing is the awful white-black contrast in dark mode and those childish blue focus contours (Bridge), like the average user is so dumb that he doesn't knows where is the focus, so let's highlight it strongly for him...

Other, countless threads can be found on this forum regarding the troubles regarding Bridge. And no, there is no such thing as "my machine", since on a daily basis I am using more computers (having different hardware setup) and I have access to computers of other folks too...

From time to time I install the newest version of Bridge and I'm always returning sadly to the 2022 version, since that is the last, good working version. Thing is, I have 2 subscriptions at Adobe (full suite and photography plan) and I have to use an older versions to get the things done fast, without being annoyed by the newest glitches.

[erikah98492810]

Adobe Bridge 2024 remains unuseable. It is beyond shocking how unuseable it really is. Someone from Adobe will eventually come on here and try to blame my specs, but we all know that is not the problem. Get serious adobe. 

[richardg26365462]

i only use bridge 2022 for some of the same reasons and sometimes have to resort to 2019.

[Loop1Photography]

I agree 100% and to excacerbate the issue, the latest version of photoshop is not compatible with the older (good) version of Bridge. As soon as the change was made to Bridge with those god-aweful multiple scroll bars I wrote a complaint to Adobe and of course it fell on deaf ears.  Bridge is a very important part of my workflow but I won't upgrade bridge or photoshop until Adobe fixes bridge.  Thanks for your post above I was wondering if bridge was still a shitt-show and sounds like it is. 

[Abuse removed by moderator]

[JOHNMONT]

Sorry Adobe, but this app is pretty frustrating. Adobe, if you're listening, here's a couple of suggestions:

1. Ditch the double scrolling bars — just have one where you can scroll from the top of the window to the botton and have the folder info permantly at the bottom of the window (as was in the earlier versions).

2. When having a group of highlighted images selected, have the keyboard arrow keys take you to the fist of the unselected images at the top or bottom of those selected images (as was in the earlier versions).

3. When moving/reordering a group of selected images with in a window, you can move them down the collection, but when you want to move them higher in the collection the mouse/arrow hits the top bar it tries to place them into the bar. Why can't the window just scrol up to position the moving group of images higher (as was in the earlier versions)?

[Loop1Photography]

Yeah all they need to do is take the 2022 version and fix it so I could open an image with the current version of photoshop and it would be a win. Adobe better be careful, programs like capture one would be very capable of replacing photoshop with just a few addtional features for me. The fact that Adobe F'd up bridge over two years ago and hasn't addressed the issues says they couldn't give a damn about their user base.