CS6 E Bridge Slow to load thumbnails, 'building criteria'

What I don't understand is, after two years of complaints, paying for a premium product, why has Adobe not issued a fix for this problem?  I am not a techie, use the software for my business, and do not have time to fix their problems. 

This problem just started for me this week.  They need to take care of their customers and issue a fix

Here's another "kitchen sink" tip that may or may not work. I discovered this recently when I readjusted my mouse double-click selection speed and keyboard stroke repeat speed and started getting "Resolve Alias" message dialog boxes whenever I double-clicked folder aliases to open them on my desktop and when emptying the trash using the keyboard shortcut.

I slowed down my mouse double-click speed and keyboard stroke repeat speed in System Preferences and these message dialog boxes went away. This also stopped images selected in Bridge's Content panel in order to generate the main Preview from immediately launching into ACR with just one single click. Seeing Bridge seems to be quite sensitive about any changes that occur within image folders either by double-clicking images to open in ACR or just single clicking folders to show thumbnails, I'm suspicious that the electronic pulse action of quickly repeating keystokes/mouse clicks set in System Preferences might be doing something under the hood we're not aware and may be the cause for all the variables from other contributors with slightly different scenarios related to this thumbnail rebuild issue.

Just another variable to rule out.

Was looking for ground zero 2014 on this topic after following Yammer's posts going as far back as 2011 in search of a solution for my CS5 Bridge thumbnail extraction/rebuild issue. The 2014 update and summation on this page is quite helpful in that it lists all the accumulative "kitchen sink" solutions along with all the inconsistencies in causality from each contributor who seem to have a slightly different situation from reading previous threads on this issue.

Here's my CS5 variable and so far my solution to the never ending rebuilding (thumbnail extractions) whenever clicking on an image folder with Content panel open in Film Strip mode in Bridge CS5.

I have 180 image folders in my Pictures folder on Mac OS 10.6.8, 64bit Mac Mini.

Bridge Cache Preference settings...

1. "Keep 100% Previews In Cache" selected...

2. "Automatically Export Cache To Folders When Possible" not selected.

3. Cache Size slider maxed out to 500,000.

4. "Preferred Embedded (Faster)" thumbnails selected whose icon/dropdown menu can be seen when Bridge's "Path Bar" is turned on under Bridge's "Window" menu (Film Strip mode in my case).

However, what I have to do to stop the rebuilding of the thumbnails in its tracks is to click on each image folder and purge the folder cache under Bridge's Tool menu>Cache>"Purge Cache For Folder XXX". Purging cache in Preferences doesn't work. I have to purge cache by clicking one folder at a time on ALL 180 image folders and then selecting "Purge Cache For Folder..." using the Tools menu system. It doesn't matter if the images have crops that touch ACR's bounding frame or if lens profiles are selected or the number of images in a folder which in my case averages about 30.

With this method I've noticed the more folders I apply this procedure to clicking on folders farther down the list in Picture folder, the more the Content panel chokes a bit by not showing all image frames along with the "thumbnail extraction" indicator in Bridge's lower left corner still trying to rebuild thumbnails. I then have to invoke "Purge Cache For Folder..." AGAIN through Tools menu to get it to stop with all frames now viewable in Content panel.

I can quit Bridge and restart and/or restart my computer and so far the rebuilding of thumbnails has stopped when I select image folders going down the list using the down arrow key. The Content panel shows all images and the spinning ball icon along with the "thumbnail extraction" indicator in the lower left corner now only show a list of number of items and number of hidden items with the spinning ball now only showing up for a couple of seconds.

Same problems here.  I tried all the suggestions - no good for me.

THEN...I remembered a solution I had for a mail problem I was getting a while ago.

I'm a hoarder of junk.

My desktop is so cluttered with images, text files etc etc - its a large screen and I regularly fill it

My solution to stop Bridge running slow - simply delete all the files off my desktop

Remove the clutter

Now I just have a couple of links i use regularly and recycle bin - and Bridge runs as it should, once again

Try it....it may work for you.

Discovered today, 21 May 2013. HOPEFULLY, the ANSWER!!

Open BRIDGE

Select THUMBNAIL OPTIONS from the icon on the address bar at the right/top of the screen.

This should have HIGH QUALITY PREVIEWS checked.

Check GENERATE 100% PREVIEWS.

Immediately UNCHECK GENERATE 100% PREVIEWS

This should reset the registry key that causes BRIDGE to continuously reload 100% previews of thumbnails!

A further symptom that this is occurring is that once the folder has been re-cached by Bridge (before doing the above), all the image files in that folder will have 100% previews already (no "Loading 100%" when the spacebar has been pressed and a left-click on the image to load the 100% view), even though this switch is un-checked.).

It appears that something causes BRIDGE to set this flag in the registry (incorrectly), while showing the flag as not set in the visual user interface. Setting and un-setting the flag causes the registry key to be correctly re-initialised.

I have encountered this on two PCs running CS6. On my own PC, re-installing CS6 to fix the loss of the connection between BRIDGE and PHOTOSHOP also corrected the above problem, so it appears to be an intermittent fault when CS6 is installed. Sometimes the registry flag is initialised correctly, and sometimes it is not.

The other occurrence was on a friend's PC. That PC has also lost the connection between Bridge and Photoshop, so it could be that the registry "corruption" causes both problems. The continuously loading thumbnails (and displaying the message "Building Criteria ... " while Bridge does this) appear to be resolved by performing the above action (or by re-installing CS6). That PC's owner has now re-loaded a whole swag of his image folders in Bridge. Some have needed to re-cache the thumbnails. When this has been done once (relatively quick, now that Bridge is not re-building 100% previews), returning to that folder loads the Bridge database and thumbnails for that folder almost instantly.

On my own PC, opening a folder containing 900 image files (450 .DNG with original raw embedded + 450 large JPEGs, with user-applied metadata, takes less than 5 seconds). Changing this switch for an open folder immediately precipitates the long process of generating 100% previews for that folder. This is PAINFULLY slow! This operation can only be cancelled by re-setting the switch back to un-checked.

A study of two PCs doth not a representative sample make, I know; but it does seem to validate the theory.

BTW, do not use both CS5 and CS6 Bridge on the same computer without changing the central cache location for at least one version - and preferably for both.

Hope this is of some help to others.

I am running Win7 Pro x64 on a new build PC and suffered the same excruciatingly slow performance of Bridge.  Try running the latest version of Bridge (5.0.2.4) in Vista SP2 Compatibility Mode.  Both 32bit and 64bit Bridge now work like a dream (Attention Adobe Support!).

1. Click the Windows Orb bottom left and click 'All Programs'

2. Right-click on Adobe Bridge (32bit or 64bit)

3. Click 'Copy'

4. Right-click on the Windows Desktop and click 'Paste Shortcut'

5. Right-click the Shortcut and click 'Properties'

6. Click on the 'Compatibility' tab

7. Click the 'Run this program in compatibility mode' checkbox and select 'Windows Vista (Service Pack 2) from the dropdown..

8. Click 'ok'

You may do this for both 32bit and 64bit versions of bridge.  Click on the appropriate shortcut on the desktop to launch the program.

I just went to the adobe download page and updated my version of Bridge to v.5.0.2.4 and suddenly this whole frustrating problem stopped. Image that. I can use it now without resorting to all the profanity.

Well, I solved my annoyances with Bridge...by finally spending some time with Google's (free) Picasa. It has everything I need and runs fine. Direct access to source folders, keywords and galleries, plays movies...the works.

I'm having the same problems with the spinning cache (or whatever) circles; I can no longer even navigate my folders in Bridge. Useless. I was actually thinking I could use Bridge to organize and keep track of my photos. I think Adobe has bitten off more than it can chew. I wanted an alternative to iPhoto and Aperture that didn't make umpteen hard-to-find duplicates of my files. No good. Maybe I'll try Picasa again. Adobe CS6 continues to disappoint. (I work in Adobe products at least 8 hours a day...they seriously need some competition.)

Have you tried to "Compact Cache" to optimize the cache performance? You can find the option "Compact Cache" in Preferences dialog.