Adobe Bridge Replacement
Terresa Cherrie
One thing I need and miss in OS X's Finder is the ability and the tools to better organize my files. I have quite a bit of data on my Mac between the internal and all external drives. It can be challenging at times to browse a find a specific file. With this in mind here is my question:
I have looked at some of the options out there including Leap, Path Finder and Commander One but found that they don't offer much more than the Finder does. One option I have found that seems interesting is Adobe's Bridge. It offers the ability to tag files with keywords that can be searched and filtered, files can be rated and also color coded.
Bridge is buggy, slow, and lacks support for a BUNCH of Apple technology. I personally would not recommend trying to replace the Finder. Lack of organization is not the fault of the software tools you have.
I agree with Luminographics in that I would not find Bridge to be an adequate Finder replacement. It was not meant to be used as such. Rather, it was designed to let you view, organize, rate, and work with your images. The fact that it can do more is somewhat if a serendipitous coincidence.
Rather than try to replace the Finder, what I've done is to find other application that enhance the Finder. For example, I cannot imagine running my Mac without Default Folder. Work with this for 30 minutes and you'll never look back.
For copying files from one drive to another, I could not imagine being without Chronosync. This is more for maintaining large collections of files on multiple drives. For example, I have one 4 TB drive that I keep all of my photos and other documents on. I have a 2nd 4 TB drive that I use to back up all of the files of the first drive so if Drive A fails, I have everything also on Drive B. I use Chronosync to back A to B at least once a week unless I just did a major input into A. When you are copying 10 files this is not much an issue but when you are doing 10,000+ it's essential.
The advantage I found in bridge is the gallery view with thumbnais of files that help me easily identify them. Also Bridge allows the user (me) to choose the size of these thumbnails in gallery view, which is a big help. Another great feature is the option to hide folders. In other words, Bridge will display all the contents of a folder and also the contents of all folders contained in that root folder without displaying the folders themselves allowing you to see ALL files in one selected location or folder.
My primary intention is to use an application to browse all my files or to choose them by keyword or tag. Bridge is also great at this since you can assign as many keywords as necessary and then perform a 'filtered' search by simply clicking or selecting one or more keywords.
It would be great to use Bridge to perform file operations (renaming, moving, copyingm, deleting, etc...) but this is not the primary reason why I thought Bridge would be a good choice for file browsing.
Also, what is the status today on the assingment of keywords to files by Bridge? I understand that for RAW image files Bridge creates an additional sidecar XMP files where information is save including keywords. What about other files formats such as TIFF, JPEG, Word, PDF, Excel, ... ?
However, since I'm constantly keeping the content updated to the 2nd drive, I didn't lose pretty much anything. There were two files that I felt were worth getting the most recent version of so I was able to get the drive booted up long enough to get both of them and after that it self-ejected again.
Wondering if you have any updates on how you ended up. I use Bridge as you suggest and against the advice here because I have not found a better method to manage my workflow. Essentially I have a fast drive with my most current images backing up to a slower, larger drive. It works wonderfully, I can just point LightRoom to the larger volume when freeing up space on the smaller faster drive.
I manage deletions by using metadata to store which are set to be deleted forever and make sure that a Chronosync backup has run before actually purging the images. But that only deletes the images from the LR Catalog and the fast local drive. They all remain on the larger drive with no references to them in the Catalog. Bridge handles this with a smart folder that searches for the images that should be deleted. ALL of the comments here, recommending not to use Bridge for this are SPOT ON. No argument from me, I do NOT advocate for how I am doing this! I just wanted to associate myself with your question and see if you have learned anything new.
I am also wondering if the good people here who have offered help with suggestions like Default Folder, which I take to mean the software Default Folder X? I can't see how this helps us? But I will absolutely havd a look at it.
Thanks all,
Default folder will not help you in any way for finding things. Where DF shines is to help you organize and get access to your folders. You state that you move images from one folder on one drive and move them to another drive. In DF, you can always show recent folders as well as have a list of Favorite folders. At any time you are looking at a Mac Finder window to open a file or to save a file to a location, DF will be there. I find it absolutely invaluable and a profound time saver.
If you're looking for helpful software, and you're already using Chronosync, the next one I HAVE to point out is HoudahSpot. This is a search application that gives you amazing search capabilities with boolian power. For example, say you're looking for a jpg made in the last 30 days but you want to focus that search to only one of 3 external drives. Piece of cake. I think you get the idea. Simply, I've been using this for years and am still learning more of its capabilities.
Good luck!
I am hoping I learn that HS has hooks in it that will allow me to pair .xmp files with my camera raw images etc. and understand the way Adobe handles metadata. It's something Bridge undedstands more than me but like most things tech related you have to be a little smarter some times. But not too much more or you into REAL trouble.
As you can see on the right hand side, you can add/subtract (or ignore) the farious fields. Out of site, behind the dropdown is the option of where you want to look, either by specific folder or drive and/or exclude folder(s) or drive(s).
On the bottom of the dropdown is "other..." When you click that you can a full list of all of the possible fields to do searches on AND check as to whether they should be included in the dropdown list seen above.
Wonderful thank you! I am afraid I cannot quite tell which program you are using but it doesn't matter I am getting HoudahSpot and DF because of this illuminating thread. There are some shocking gaps in my knowledge since I work a government job during the day where the windows are ubiquitous and I just don't get to learn these cool tricks.
HoudahSpot for instance? I do not think supports this, but by simply following these steps? Suddenly Spotlight is able to search my NAS folders as mounted over my LAN.
But yeah, I think you are showing me DF, I have yet to try it. Thank you regardless!!
Michael
Because you are interested, here's a screenshot from Default Folder: At this moment I'm in Photoshop and have done a Command-o. Of things to note if you have an image selected, it will show up below the normal finder window. On the right, you can see the Recent Folders and the Favorites. On the left you can pin folders for quick access. The dark gray region to the right is showing that my cursor is over my Desktop folder. If I click on that (or any other folder that is currently open in the Finder window), the focus of that open window will automatically snap to that folder.
In respect to your HoudahSpot suggestion, I do see where I can specify a star rating in my search, I just can't get any results no matter the value. Regardless, I worry this would still only return the xmp files, not their corresponding CR2 camera raw files. So to the point of the posted topic, Bridge is hard to replace for doing a search for CR2 files with a specific rating or other metadata Adobe uses and that Bridge is good at working with.
But I get it, Bridge is also *hard to use* for this purpose and I wholeheartedly agree with those here who rightly discourage using it as I have described. I do not advocate for this, and remain on the search for a tool or a linux shell script I can use to mv or rm CR2/xmp pairs of files based on the metadata in the corresponding xmp file.
And gosh darn it, what and interesting way to not find what I am looking for. I am learning so much from all of you thanks very much.
Michael
My question is: is there a way to export the Bridge keywords and make them useful for another software or for finder? Perhaps something like attaching the keyword to the data of the photo in itself, outside of Bridge? making the keyword in bridge a tag in Finder, automatically?
First, let me welcome you to two of my three most important add-ons to the Mac. I've been using these tools for as long as I can remember (and I've been using Macs since 1985). They will both enhance your productivity far beyond your initial reasons.
The basic answer is yes: Bridge does not store and/or associate keywords with files. Rather, Bridge adds keywords to the file's metadata. When you do a search with Bridge, it's looking for that metadata. The power of Houdahspot is that you can both search for keywords as well as add filters to that search. So if you do a search for "mom," in Houdahspot you can also narrow down the dates of the file (e.g., before 1990). [Let me add a note here that if you scanned a photo of your mom from a photo that was taken in the 1940s, you'd have to add that date to the metadata and add that information to your search to find that image. Yeah, that's obvious but I'm adding that tidbit just in case.]
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