Resource Hog?

[GlennsArt]

G'Day. I have been having all kinds of poor performance issues in all of my Adobe products of late (I use Bridge, Illustrator and Photoshop, CC 2020, all current updates as of Apr 1, 2020). I have traced the issues back to Bridge. When it's not running, everything works fine. To troubleshoot, I started Activity Monitor and that for a period while watching Bridge. Bridge was taking as much as 400% of my CPU resources, and not infrequently. I read the help articles on how to improve Bridge performance, cleared the local cache and optimized the cache. I then restarted Bridge, selected the folders I normally use and let the cache rebuild completely. Then I took the focus off Bridge and simply monitored the Activity Monitor without touching Bridge or any of the files that fell within the folders I had built the cache with. What I found was the CPU% for Bridge went up and down like a yo-yo constantly, rising frequently to 100% and greater, then dropping off to somewhere near 0.5 to 2%, and repeating once again. I had no other Adobe software (except for CC, which is always running) open. It would maintain this 100+% level for several seconds to minutes before falling again.

Further, and possibly related, at a later date I attempted to rename a folder in Bridge. When I hit <RETURN>, the folder name remained at "untitled". I waited for about 2 minutes and figured it simply hadn't taken, so repeated the process. Same result, and this time I waited 5 minutes. Still no change. Finally I went into Finder and changed it there, which gave me an instant result. Several minutes after that, Bridge came back with an error message saying that the name I wanted to use was already in use and to select a different one. This suggested to me that it was reading the first attempt to change it and after "thinking about it" for about a half hour following the second attempt, it recognized that the change had already been made. This is also not a first-time event for this and one reason I stopped using Bridge for anything other than browser activities.

Lastly, when I went to shut it down, it literally took about 10 minutes to close. Literally. As it was trying to close, I was watching the Activity Monitor and Bridge was showing as about 100 to 200% pretty consistently. I never got a "program unresponsive" message during the shutdown so that combined with the Activity Monitor suggests that the program is doing *something*. The question is, what and why?

I would like some direction on how to fix this issue please. As it is now, I only open Bridge when I have absolutely no other choice. Otherwise the program is useless to me, even as a browser. Below is a link to my key Preferences settings screenshot. Hopefully someone can tell me that I have something set incorrectly (although there should be no "incorrect" setting in these sections - if there are, why would they be there?). 

https://glenndavy.myportfolio.com/issues

My system is:  iMac Late 2015 27" 5K Retina, 32 GB RAM (verified as working), 2.3 TB free space on my HD, and I mostly operate Bridge off my Wacom Cintiq 24 Pro, although that's had no effect I can tell on Bridge's performance. In Activity Monitor, Bridge shows as using a fairly consistent 3.2 GB of RAM, so there's lots of overhead there.

Hopefully Adobe has some suggestions so that I can go back to using Bridge. Thank you.

Glenn

[gary_sc]

Hi Glen,

First off, other than your Wacom Cintiq (I have a Wacom Intuos), we have very similar machines and I'm not experiencing ANYTHING like you are. So there's something in/with your system that might be an issue. BTW, you didn't say what your OS was/is? What is it? I'm on Mojave.

You do say one thing that I wish to check: you state you have 2.3 TB of free space on your hard drive. Is that an internal or external HD. Mine is a 1 TB SSD internal but I keep all of my images on a 4 TB external drive. Bridge uses your internal HD for it's caching so if the drive you speak of is external, that may make a difference. Otherwise...

I would try several things: first off I'd go to Tools (menu) -> Manage Cache. then select Clean Up Cache (Purge all local cache files).

Try that, did it help?

If not, or in addtion, go to Preferences -> Cache, and check all boxes (this will not be immediate fix, more for future activities).

Finally, go to (https://www.northernsoftworks.com/catalinacachecleaner.html) and download their Cache Cleaner. (it has a 15 day free trial, I did that once some 12-14 years ago and have been using it ever since). After opening it up, selet the Cache Cleaning tab and select Medium Cleaning and then check Clean All Users Caches. (While it's open, you might also want to run the Maintenance tab and run "All."

Let us know if any of this helps.

[GlennsArt]

Hi Gary,

Many thanks for your helpful reply. Yes, I did forget to mention I'm on Catalina (latest) and the HD's I'm working off are internal (Fusion 3TB drives). Bridge is the only program I'm having this issue with so I'm comfortable in saying that the drives themselves are working fine. I will double check where my cache is in Preferences but I'm pretty certain it's on the internal drive. 

On the cache, I did purge the cache as mentioned, as well as optimized the cache, all from the Preferences menu. To be sure though, I just did it through the Tools menu, but I suspect that's the same control set as you see in the Preferences > Cache Management window, which I did yesterday. If it is the same, then while it helped some, the issues I reported on were post that operation.

As you can see from the screenshot, all the boxes you mentioned were checked prior to recording the data from the Activity Monitor. 

Thanks for the link to the cache cleaner product. I'm sure it's pretty good, but with respect, I don't feel like I should have to run another piece of software to get my Adobe products to perform as they should. I do have Clean My Mac X which does free up space for me, and cleans out the cache. As I say, all my other products (PS, IL, ID, Word, Excel, etc., etc.) run fine. It's only Bridge that is having the issues, so it appears to be something specific to that. It might be it works somewhat different on Catalina as opposed to Mojave as that seems to be the main difference between our rigs. 

Thanks again for the help Gary. Much appreciated.

Glenn

[GlennsArt]

So Gary, I'm wondering something here. This morning I've been working in Illustrator with some pretty small documents. I did clear the cache from the Tools menu as you suggested so I don't know if that's having any impact or not, considering I did that yesterday from the Preferences menu, but so far Bridge has been behaving itself. Now when I'm working in Photoshop, I'm often working with very large files, frequently 10+GB's. Would the size of the files one is working on at the time, even though Bridge has read them into the cache and is now idle, make any difference in this situation? I'm trying to narrow down exactly when the issue is arising as right now it seems to be working ok. 

Thanks again,

Glenn

[gary_sc]

Hi Glenn,

There are two issues you brought up that make your issue more "interesting." Bridge has had a long deserved reputation for building images very slowly. But providing new names for a folder slowdown is a different issue. 

Back to your images for a moment: yes 10+ GB images do affect Bridge. That's why images are cached so that once it's read, it's read (at least until you need to rebuild that cache). [On a side note, are your images that large in size due to the number of pixels or layers? Just curious] Nonetheless, I wonder what caches first: a folder of 100 10+ GB images a folder of  1000 1 GB images. I do not know.

I'm also trying to figure out what's happening with your renaming issue. I know that on my system, there are times when I try doing the simplist thing and suddenly I get the spinning pizzas for much longer than I think I should but then things are fine. Some of this I know are pageouts (even with 32 GB ram, when you have 5 Adobe applicaitons open along with 7 or 8 other applications open, things on the ram get tight), but other times, I'm not really sure.

Oh, one other thing to try: have you rebuilt Bridge's preferences? [Quit Bridge and then double-click on it with your fingers also on Shift-Option-Command. A window will pop up asking if you want to rebuild the Prefs. Click Yes.]

Lastly, (and sorry for rambling here), amongst the things that Catalina Cache Cleaner does is all of the maintenance things that should be done automatically by the Mac OS but doesn't always do. Here you can "just do it," and thereby get it done.

[GlennsArt]

Hey Gary,

On your first question, the answer is "yes". The very large images are often paintings that have a large number of layers AND the pixel dimensions are also very large, so it's both really. These are all .psb files and I work in those quite a bit.

I've seen that spinning pizza many times in Photoshop, and they happen frequently and for long periods of time. Since I started shutting Bridge down (or not starting it), that seems to have stopped. In fact, it was that whhich led me to start troubleshooting what was going on with my programs, which led me to this point. Now I've not done a lot in PS since I discovered Bridge was hogging my resources, but I'm pretty sure I have found the reason for that problem. Typically I'm only running Bridge and PS, although very occasionally I'm running Illustrator at the same time, but that's rare. I have been watching my RAM useage as well as I believed that's where the problem was in the first place, but it's always had a reasonable amount of headroom.

I have not tried rebuilding Bridge's Preferences, but that's a good idea. I will give that a try before the day is out (I've been monitoring it again today and it seems better, so far). Thanks for that. 

No worries on rambling ( 🙂 ) - you never know where the next great idea will come from! Clean My Mac X essentially will do the same thing (plus other things along with it) and I have run the "free space" and the "free RAM" functions a few times. That's made no significant difference in this issue, but thanks for the tip on that as well.

Ok, I'll try clearing the preferences this evening and see how things go tomorrow and report back. Many thanks again for your time. I'll let you know.

Glenn

[GlennsArt]

Hey Gary,

We're making progress here, thanks to your help. All day I've been working on training images which have all been relatively small JPEG's. I've had Bridge and PS open, along with Safari and watching some videos. Bridge has been very good. No major spikes at all. So, I thought about your answer re file sizes affecting it, and now have gone to a folder that has a painting I did in it that is about a Gig in size. More than that, I have a couple of  reference images which are quite large in that same folder. That has driven Bridge to "heart-attack status" once again. The spiking occurred initially while it was building the previews; not unexpected. However, it's continuing to happen (spiking CPU%) even after all the previews have been built. And therein lies the issue. Why does it keep spiking like that? I don't have PS open currently and I'm not doing anything (that I know of) inside Bridge. This is the conundrum. So, another question - I have nested folders with images inside the main folder that is containing the 3 or 4 images I refer to above. These nested folders have some pretty big images in them. Does Bridge build the previews for those nested folders as well or does it just build the previews for images that are in the folder you are presently in only? If it's building previews for the nested folders as well, that might explain further spiking, even though there are no messages at the bottom of the window saying that previews are being generated. If not, I can't explain why the spiking is continuing to happen. Any ideas there?

Many thanks for your help here Gary. Really appreciate your time.

Glenn

[gary_sc]

Hi Glenn,

You just said something that pinged my brain: "...spiking while building previews."

As stated, Bridge has never been known as a speed deamon varrying from slow to very slow. Part of this is good, what you see in Bridge is what you should be seeing in PS. Most of the very very quick image viewers rely upon the image's jpg built within the image (this is what the Finder and Explorer use).

A couple of things to check: in Bridge's Preferences, on the Advanced tab. The top two options should NOT be checked. (Bridge at startup is ireelavant for your needs)

Next: several other options to consider: in the top right of the Bridge's window are a couple of triangles, note the dropdown of the one on the right. MY needs are different than yours as my images are typically about 20 MB each with an occasional 50-100 MB. Yet, I have my setting to Embedded.

I do not need to see high quality images of my thumbnails. If I was (say) a fasion photogrpaher than I would becuase I want to compare images very closetly before I select the one(s) I want to work on. I can see all I want/need to see from a generic thumbnail to know I want to spend time on the image.

Oh, I'm 99.99% sure subfolders are a non-issue. IF you have your Path Bar showing (and you should) (found in the Windows (menu)) and you click and hold on any of the bird's trail carrots, you can select the option to show contents of subfolder. Otherwise, there's no need for that. [The one thing that's in the back of my head is does Bridge start to "look" at subfolders to speed subsequent opening of folders and if so, can that be shut off. I will try and check on this.

Best,

Gary

[gary_sc]

Hi Glenn,

Just had one more thought: you have a Fusion Drive. Gotta admit that I'm not a big fan of those. It's fine if you have a few apps and lots of data but less so when you have lots of apps that often grab any and everything they can. Guess what Bridge and Photoshop do?

Some of this might be Bridge and Photoshop fighting for SSD space on your drive.

Gary

[GlennsArt]

Hmmnn, never knew that. However, it is what it is so I can't change that. Likely with some of the larger files, your assessment is dead on. We'll see if the other changes you recommended that I invoked will help. Thanks for this.

Glenn

[GlennsArt]

So I'm currently regenerating previews from a folder with some rather large files in them under the new settings (and I'm not really sure why it's regenerating those - they were cached a few hours ago, but that's for another time and likely there's a good reason for that), and so far the difference is remarkable. Instead of seeing 100 to 300% CPU usage (and hearing audible groans from my computer!), I'm now seeing something closer to 25 to 30%. That last change about the preview quality may have done the trick. I'm going to continue to play with it overnight and see how things go, but I'm optimistic. I will report back so you, and possibly others (should they be having a similar issue) will know if this worked or now.

Gary, many thanks yet again. You've been a huge help to me. Thanks so much. Back later with results.

Glenn

[GlennsArt]

Just to confirm as promised, Bridge seems to have settled down quite nicely and is not causing me any grief at this point. I do see the CPU% values wandering up and down as before, which is curious to me as to why it would do that, but now I'm continuing to see only around 30% instead of the 300% I was seeing before. It would appear as though the preview quality (Embedded vs Always High) was the key, although the other suggestions I'm sure helped as well. I have made a note in my Adobe Notes that I keep on my desktop so I won't get caught by this again. I'm considering this issue resolved at this point, with a huge thank you again to Gary who really helped me out immensely on this.

Glenn

[GlennsArt]

Ok, I take it back. Bridge has started again jumping to 99% on a relatively frequent basis. It doesn't stay there long, but the CPU% it does jump to seems to be trending upwards with time even if I'm not doing anything in it. I have been working on an Illustrator file for the morning and updating a drawing and Bridge is open to the folder with that drawing in it, so maybe it's updating that drawing, but heavens, the drawing is only 1.14 MB in size and I'm only saving every 5 to 10 minutes (although the autosave is set to the default 2 min). 

At this point I'm at a loss. I don't know if the horrendous render times are related to what I'm seeing, but it's likely, unless something changes, that I'll have to open Bridge just long enough to do what I need done (unless I can do the same thing in Finder) and then close it again ASAP. That's not very helpful to me. We shall see I guess.

Glenn

[GlennsArt]

Ahh, excellent! The options in the Advanced sectionn of Pref's were not checked, so I'm good that way. HOWEVER, I did have Always High Quality checked and like you, I don't really need that. I've now selected Embedded so we'll see how that goes. That could make a big difference indeed.

You aren't kidding about it being slow to generate the previews. I had a pet snail once who died of old age while waiting for some of my previews to be rendered... 😞 . Ok. slight exaggeration (especially since I don't have any idea how long snails actually live), but I have waited literally numerous hours waiting for some of my larger files to be rendered. So let's see if this change makes a significant improvement. 

Glenn