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Answered

Bridge 2023 and 2024 is practically unusable

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
September 25, 2023
25 replies
16777 views

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?

Correct answer Loop1Photography

I'm happy to report here it seems the most recent version of Bridge has addressed the issues I personally had with other post 2022 versions of the software. If you haven't yet tried it, you can keep the older version installed by unchecking the checkbox that would otherwise remove the old version. I still have both versions installed pending further testing but for now, problem solved!

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artonyh

Participating Frequently

Probably the worst software I have ever used. I have been a photographer for fifty four years and started using bridge about when it first came out. A game changer! Now it's nothing but a usesless, time consuming peice of junk. I am paying to have my work increased from two hours a day to about three days to achieve the same result with crashes, bugs and stuff not working as expected. Photoshop makes me pull my heair out. What is the matter with these people? Why mess with a perfectly good program and stuff it up entirely?

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DFord068

Participating Frequently

I've never had so many issues with Bridge that I do with the latest version (May 2024). It is unusable, I delete the cache every single time but it takes ages to build a cache. The batch rename is patchy at best, sometimes it works but most often it leaves files as AdobeBridgeRenamexxx because it correctly identifies duplicates but doesn't always rename them as such.
For now I've gone back to Directory Opus 12 which at least allows me to rough sort the 100k photos I'm currently going through with no performance issues whatsoever.

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Loop1PhotographyCorrect answer

Inspiring

I'm happy to report here it seems the most recent version of Bridge has addressed the issues I personally had with other post 2022 versions of the software. If you haven't yet tried it, you can keep the older version installed by unchecking the checkbox that would otherwise remove the old version. I still have both versions installed pending further testing but for now, problem solved!

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DiodorS

Inspiring

@Loop1Photography @NetPixel Studio How did you fix the light application/menu bar in Bridge 2024?

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Loop1Photography

Inspiring

I use a Mac. Looks like you're using Windows...

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DiodorS

Inspiring

@NetPixel Studio I've managed to fix that annoying blue border: https://community.adobe.com/t5/bridge-discussions/workaround-disable-or-change-the-color-of-blue-borders-around-active-panels/m-p/14477318#M49015

But I'm going back to 2022 for as long as it works with the newest PS.

--

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dugm22

New Participant

It's just so frustrating that I have spent hours trying to fix a program that is just substandard!!!! I have been using bridge for well over a deade and the latest 2 versions are trash! I have a very streamlined workflow and it's impossible to sort and transfer files from folder to folder. My right click takes 45 seconds sometimes just to open the menu!. I have plenty of ssd space and 64g of ram. No other programs that I run have any issue doing this. Why can't they just fix this???? it worked fine in the 2022 version.

gary_sc

Community Expert

@dugm22 this is something that I do all the time. I can transfer from window to window or Content Panel to Content Panel. How are you trying to do this?

I simply select the image(s), mouse down, and drag them to the Content Panel that I want them to go into. This is no more challenging than moving/copying a layer/style in Photoshop from one Tab to another.

What/how are you doing this?

NetPixel

Inspiring

It seems that the problem is not hidden in how/what to do. The problem is simply the substandard of the newer version of bridge. There are people who don't like to move slowly and think long before doing anything (me included). The problem is, the 2023 and 2024 versions of Bridge (including Acrobat Reader and the other redesigned UI) doesn't allow this. The software became sluggish and non-responsive, therefore the workflow can't be smooth enough, people always have to wait for the software to respond, yet on high-end machines. We know why: incompetent software design, inefficient, spaghetti code behind.

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JOHNMONT

New Participant

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)?

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Loop1Photography

Inspiring

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.

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JOHNMONT

New Participant

Agree. I used to be a real promoter of Bridge to colleagues — I thought it was quick, practical and intuitive. Now, I'll be looking for an alternative if things don't get sorted soon.

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Loop1Photography

Inspiring

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]

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richardg26365462

Known Participant

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

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erikah98492810

New Participant

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.

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Klaus5F8D

Inspiring

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

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polyxo

Inspiring

Hi @21607998, 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...

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Ajwoernicki

New Participant

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.

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.

ironthing

New Participant

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

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