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Showing posts from 2020

"Why Do My Old Keywords Keep Reappearing on Photos in Adobe Bridge?"

Adobe Bridge can be infuriatingly quirky if you've ever applied hierarchical keywords to your photos in either Bridge or Lightroom. What are hierarchical keywords? Those are the keywords organized in levels, like "Places > Washington State > Seattle" or "Events > Anniversaries > 50th." Besides being associated with each other, they can even be applied together automatically. Using hierarchical keywords is a safer practice in Lightroom, because the keywords and hierarchy for each file are kept primarily in a central database or "catalog" and can be instantly modified there for your entire photo collection. But Bridge has no such database -- nothing at all but a simple list of keywords to show in the Keyword panel. The keywords and hierarchy for each photo can only be written directly into the individual photo file or its associated XMP file. And if you modify your hierarchy in the Keyword panel, or discard it entirely, the original scheme

"Why Are My Adobe Bridge Keyword Searches and Smart Collections So Slow?"

Because that's what you've chosen. When you start a keyword search or create a Smart Collection, you're given a default option to "Include All Non-Indexed Files." And right next to that appears the warning "(may be slow)." Folks, they're not kidding. When you leave this checked on a first search after starting Bridge -- or first view a Smart Collection created with this option -- the app goes through EVERY target file and folder and reindexes it, just in case any files were changed or added since the app was last open. This takes a LONG time. After that, Bridge relies on those cached indexes it just made, but it STILL scans all target folders to make sure no files have been added. This takes much less time, but it's still far from instant. Now, let's look at what happens if you uncheck this option. Boom, you're done. Bridge relies only on its cached indexes, and really, if you blink, you'll miss it. The downside, though, is that