Bridge for managing remote archive?

[Crossboard]

I'm an image retoucher. I just bought a 2019 Mac Pro, so I must now abandon the nifty Jetphoto Studio program that I used for catalogueing my Photoshop work files - - JetPhoto does not offer a 64-bit install.

I'm considering using Adobe Bridge, but not sure if it will do exactly what I want it to do. I DO NOT want to have to store my entire archive of thousands of hi-Rez files on my Mac Pro. All I want on the computer are lo-rez files, similar to the way JetPhoto converts the files. Can Bridge do this?

I just need Bridge for very basic needs:

- to give me a visual reference to all images

- to link the photographer's name to the images

- to tell me which archive DVD # each image is found on

- to allow me to tag keywords to various images (grass, asphalt, wood surface, etc), allowing me to search by keywords and retrieve past work images as source files.

I'm sure Bridge manages these chores, but mainly concerned about Bridge importing only lo-rez files and nothing more. If I do use Bridge, will I have to suffer through the additional step of converting my own small files for importing into Bridge? Sure hope not.

Otherwise, does anyone recommend another Mac (64-bit) utility for this task?

[gary_sc]

Hi Crossboard

Wow, remote archive, Bridge is not meant to be on servers, it's original intent was for the individual photographer/creative person. 

Also, Bridge, by itself does NOT create new images. Beyond thumbnails (which are not new images, only small thumbanils of the original image), you could use Tool -> Photoshop -> Image Processor to create small resolution images but that is a whole new image completely divorced from the original. I'm sure that's also not what you want.

One possibility is Lightroom Classic and use their Smart Preview feature. Lightroom doesn't care where the images are and if you set it up to generate smaller lossy DNG files that are 2560 pixels on the long edge. Since these are relatively small, they can be stored on your HD with minimal space loss. The concept behind them is that as you are working on a small version of your files, LR will work faster (smaller files), and if you use a laptop, you can disconnect the HD, work on your files at any location, and when you reconnect your external HD to your computer, all of the changes are updated to the original files.

You can use Keywording to coordinate the owners info. 

Since the reason/purpose of Smart Previews is the ability to work/see the images when the HD is disconnected, it should work with removable DVD/BlueRay disks. (I would add the name of the disk to the keywords as an extra bit of information.)

This will give you some info on Smart Previews and Lightroom.

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/lightroom-smart-previews.html

I'm not all that sure how well, LR will satisfy ALL of your needs but I think it will do most of them.

Let me add that what I do is to have ALL of my images (about 60,000 images at this point) on an external drive and I have my catalog in the same folder. This is on a 4 TB drive (call it drive A). I also have a 2nd 4 TB drive (call it drive B) that I backup everything that's on the A drive. I do this backup about once a week or just after a big ingestion of new images or spent a lot of time doing image enhancement. FWIW, I use Chronosync to do the backup.

Let me know what you end up with, I am curious. If you have any qustions, just ask.

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

Just to be clear, Bridge is not a database where images are imported and stored, Bridge is a file browser. 

[Crossboard]

Thanks for the note, Stephen. Maybe Gary's idea for Lightroom is a good thing to investigate. Thanks to you too, Gary.

Hmm, as valauable and simple a tool that the free JetPhoto Studio was, I would hope to locate another simple utility to get the job done. I would think there's lots of people out there like myself who need something simple and straightforward, without having to use programs like Lightroom and bridge that offer so much more than required for the simple needs I noted above.

[Lumigraphics]

Bridge will not work whatsoever for your needs. Lightroom Classic might work but performance will be all over the place. There really is nothing on the market that works with low-rez remote proxy images unless you get into a high-priced DAM.

[Crossboard]

Update to my workflow:

yes Bridge seems to be working for me in the way I need it to. My routine:

I have an archive of about 160 DVDs which contain my work PSD's and tiffs. I am out of DVD, drag the files into bridge, which creates the thumbnails I need for viewing. I have created a list of keywords from which I choose based on the applicable objects within each photo. I make a note of the photographers name and the DVD # where the image resides. That's basically everything I need for me to search the bridge database.

Evidently Bridge is not directly linked to the original images, since the original areas images are not on my computer, nor connected externally. of course that's fine for me. Question: where are the thumbnail files kept on the computer?

[Lumigraphics]

Bridge is just a file browser. It shows you the content of whatever folder you have selected, nothing more. You don't drag images into Bridge to open them, you navigate to a folder in Finder or Windows Explorer. If you are dragging images from a DVD, it would be copying them to whatever folder you added them to in Bridge.

[Crossboard]

Thanks Lumigraphics! Makes sense.