Purging the Cache in Bridge

[jims50524975]

Lately, as I've been using Bridge, I've received a message that states:

"Bridge encountered a problem and is unable to read the cache. Please try purging the central cache in Cache Preferences to correct the situation."

From what I've researched, purging the cache seems like a safe option, but I'm relatively new to Bridge, and I'm just not clear on what purging the cache does. I just want to make sure that I'll still have all of my images to work with and that nothing will be erased.

Any help is appreciated!

[Ronald Keller]

When you visit a folder Bridge generates thumbnails and saves those thumnails in the cache.

Purging the cache in fact means those thumbnails are deleted. This does nothing to the actual images.

Bridge regenerates them again when visiting the folder. So nothing to worry about albeit it can take a while on large folders.

[Stephen Marsh]

Additionally to Ronald’s reply, it is not just the thumbnail, it is other data such as metadata. For example, if you update the Keyword metadata outside of Bridge in another app, the keyword may not update until Bridge has been exited/opened again or the cache for the image or folder has been purged.

[curtk77830679]

Stephen,

Does purging the cache (specifically when using the "Automatically purge stale items older than 30 days" feature) delete the keywords or collections associated with the images? Or does it exclusively clean up thumbnail/preview performance? Thanks!

[jbm007]

No

It holds small preview data to help thumbnail preview performance.

Whether or not it improves actual performance is up to debate.

I have a very fast machine and it does not show a marked improvement in speed.

[Stephen Marsh · Accepted solution]

Keywords reside in the file and here:

Prepression: Bridge – Restoring a Lost Keyword XML File

Collections and Smart collections are stored in files here:

Re: where are my collections in Bridge 2019

Re: Transfering Collections

Re: Bridge Collections

More on the cache/index here:

Centrally manage a Bridge cache

Work with the Adobe Bridge cache

And new for CC2019:

Centralized cache management