Why does Bridge need to repeatdly recreate previews?

Report · May 08, 2024

I've been using Bridge professionally for over 20 years. One question has always baffled me. Why does Bridge create new previews when a set of images is reopened? It might not do if reopened immediately but it does if I open it the next day for instance. I always thought it was because the cache was being held on my main drive but recently got a M.2 SSD drive fitted to solely store bridges cache to see if it would help and it doesn't. I've read every tutorial and guide for the preferences settings.

I have a cache size of 500GB and have barely used 50 GB in the month it's been fitted so it isn't full. I have "Keep 100% Previews" marked and to purge after 90 days.

I work with large RAW sets for weddings and just feel that Bridge makes for more work than it need for itself and its been like this for decades. Even asking it to view the embedded previews doesn't help.

I understand that if I'm viewing the set for the first time or if the set changes in some way then a new preview would be needed but not when it's just been closed down and reopened??

If anyone has further tips to speed up preview generation please let me know.

Report · May 10, 2024

Hi,

Thank you for your feedback.

Could you share the Bridge version and details of the OS with which you are facing this issue?

Regards,

Bridge Team

Report · May 31, 2024

this is a problem of design, not a bug in the software, adobe designed it to generate when the image presents itself, rather than batching the thumb generation. all of the prior posts has some adobe engineer asking "what version, setting blah blah" but it's the same user experience problem and none of you understand because you probably don't use the product. there are the same issues in forum notes from years ago, obviously ABODE DOESN'T LISTEN TO ITS CUSTOMERS. You really are disconnected from how people use the tool and it's sad. Please do something to recreate the issues on your own time and configure the software to generate previews automatically even if the files are not showing up in the screen.

Report · May 31, 2024

I'm using Bridge Beta 14.1.0.236 on Windows 11 Home. But I would like to remind you that it's done it on every version, on every operating system in the last 20 years.

Report · Nov 08, 2024

MBP M3 Max, MacOS 15.1, Bridge 14.1.2

I'd like to ask you why this problem that many users face and have brought to your attention has not been fixed until now? Is there a technical issuethat we don't know about that prevents effective thumbnail caching?

I have some external drives with many thousands of design resources. I often need to look through these, and Bridge is a good solution. I don't even need any thumbnails to be regenerated if a file is changed, but if they were -- and only for files changed -- I would be happy.

What I do not want is for my machine's resources to be constantly hogged by Bridge recreating thousands of thumbnails for no reason.
This is what it does, despite that I have "Keep 100% Previews in Cache" enabled. My cache is currently 50GB and I allow 250GB in the cache size options.

I don't see any other setting that is relevant. In my main window, there's a pulldown top right. But it doesn't matter what options I select here, Bridge still goes about regenerating all my thumbnails unnecessarily.

Why is this still happening years after users identify this as a problem?

What is the "Bridge Team" actually doing about it?

Did you give up?

Report · Nov 09, 2024

one thing i'm curious about - but not sure how to monitor - is what actually happens to the existing cache files? Those files are in a folder. So when the regeneration happens, does Bridge send a command to purge them? do they first dissapear? Or, are new duplicate files added 'along side' the 'old' ones?

Report · May 10, 2024

The best way I have found to generate cache/index folders is do a search (Edit->Find) and check box boxes. Search through your top-level image folder and let Bridge process everything.

Also, you can purge cache for a specific folder if you are having problems with it.

Report · May 31, 2024

I didn't know that option existed. Thank you. I'll will try it and see if it helps

Report · May 12, 2024

I think it's the fact that there are large performance differences between ADOBE versions, which is extremely irresponsible behavior on the part of the engineers, and even a small change in the sub-codename can make a big difference.
I'm using version 12.0.3 now, you can try this version

Report · May 13, 2024

The problem of Bridge re-caching and re-generating previews has been around for years. Many old threads in the forums on the issue, yet Adobe coders seem to remain oblivious. On my Windows 11 system, with 50K images spread over hundreds of sub-folders, the problem has been mostly absent since version 14.

The problem has always been intermittent, and does not affect everyone. So, it's system dependent. I have long held a theory, and shared it with Adobe, but who knows. In order to decide if cache, thumbnails, previews need be generated, the software has only 2, maybe 3 variables to compare - File Name, Date, and maybe some attribute like format or size. But for an attribute to change the date would also change. So really only 2 variables.

You navigate to a folder. The software looks at the files in the folder, then looks it up in the cache. If if does not find the file name in the cache, then generate. If it finds the file name in the cache, is the cache current? How would the software make that decision? Simply by comparing the date/time (modified) it gets from the operating system (Win, Mac) to the date/time stored in the cache. No match, then generate.

The rub, I suggest, comes from different formats of these 2 date/time fields plus whatever logic is used to convert one of them to the format of the other for comparison. Imagine the date/time of the OS is kept to a fraction of a second, but the date/time in the cache is not. Now imagine that the processing speed of the computer system is slow or delayed at the time Bridge/ACR/Photoshop create or updates the file. So, the delay or rounding make the date/time stored in the cache slightly different from the the date in the OS. Next time Bridge looks at the file the dates won't match, so Volia!, regeneration.

That would explain why the problem is intermittent and does not affect everyone.

P.S. Arghhhh!!! To make this post I discovered Adobe has changed the forum name. "forums.adobe.com" no longer exists. Now it's community.adobe.com. So, all bookmarks to old threads are lost.

Report · Jul 10, 2024

thanks. this gave me something to hold on to (vs chaos)

Report · Oct 10, 2024

I'm here because I could not view metadata today the way I viewed it ten days ago. It's like the metadata files are gone.

Ehshitification or crapification, whatever you want to call it, Adobe is a big-time player.