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Author Topic: Adobe Bridge is unbearably slow and locks up  (Read 3675 times)

Aram Hăvărneanu

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Adobe Bridge is unbearably slow and locks up
« on: October 13, 2018, 11:37:48 am »

Good day,

I don't like the way Lightroom functions with its catalog system, and always used Adobe Camera Raw (started from Adobe Bridge) for RAW development. Bridge/ACR were never the fastest programs in the world, but for some reason on this computer Bridge is so slow it's impossible to use. Even worse, at random times it locks up, requiring me to force quit it (actually I do kill -9 from the terminal).

In fact, I can't properly shut it down now at all. When I try to quit it, it locks up. I even let it do its thing for a few hours after it locked up, but it never recovered.

Checking basic resource utilization such as CPU usage, etc, reveals that Bridge is not doing anything in this time and not consuming any unreasonable resources.

As mentioned, this never worked perfectly, but starting from today I can't open RAW files in ACR from Bridge, without going through Photoshop (going through Photoshop stil works fine). I previously set Bridge to embed ACR directly instead of opening Photoshop when I double click on a file. When I try to do that now, it just locks up.

I have read Adobe's advice on similar issues: Troubleshoot Bridge for freezes and performance issues. Needless to say, it hasn't done anything.

My system configuration is:

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)
CPU: 4 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 48 GB 1867 MHz DDR3
GPU: AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4096 MB
Storage: 1TB SSD
OS: macOS 10.14

It works "fine" (slow, but with no lock-ups) on my mac laptops of similar generation.

Has anyone seen this before?
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DougDolde

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Re: Adobe Bridge is unbearably slow and locks up
« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2018, 06:43:55 pm »

I agree Lightroom's cataloging sucks. I use Bridge for organizing and Capture One for raw conversion. Haven't noticed anything slow about Bridge though
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Redcrown

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Re: Adobe Bridge is unbearably slow and locks up
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2018, 02:19:20 am »

In the past, many such slow/lockup problems with Bridge involve the cache and some curiosities (bugs?) in the way Bridge manages the cache. However, in those cases you can usually see Bridge racking up a lot of CPU.

One thing to try is to nuke the cache, and do it outside of Bridge. With Bridge shut down, find the Bridge cache, copy it somewhere if you want, then delete it entirely using the OS utilities. Then launch Bridge, and if possible, quickly point it at some folder with a small number of images.

If that works OK, then start navigating to folders with more images and see if it keeps up. I remember once, years ago, someone posted about a similar problem. After several responses and queries, it turned out he had Bridge pointed at a folder with over 5,000 images. Bridge was simply choking on that volume. Also, double check where your cache is stored and if that disk is healthy.
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Aram Hăvărneanu

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Re: Adobe Bridge is unbearably slow and locks up
« Reply #3 on: October 14, 2018, 07:48:46 am »

Yeah, I uninstalled all the apps, then tried to uninstall the Adobe Creative Cloud app, which failed, so I simply removed all traces of Adobe products in /Applications, /Library, and $HOME/Library (preferences, caches, etc), then reinstalled Bridge and Photoshop. I have the exact same problem as before.

Edit: Well, there's one improvement. I can now at least start up Camera Raw without freezing, but it still locks-up on quit, and randomly, in general.

I'm seriously investigating switching to Capture One (or others), but I don't like the black UI in C1 (I use almost white UI in Bridge, ACR and Photoshop), and I don't like I can't embed a smart object in Photoshop. Trivial things, I know, but it's the small things that make a big difference to me.
« Last Edit: October 14, 2018, 08:26:36 am by Aram Hăvărneanu »
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Aram Hăvărneanu

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Re: Adobe Bridge is unbearably slow and locks up
« Reply #4 on: October 17, 2018, 09:42:45 am »

So, as much as I detest Lightroom, I imported my images into it, to check its performance compared to Bridge. I am sad to have determined that the general browsing performance of Lightroom is much better than that of Bridge. Also, Lightroom never locks-up, which is always a bonus.

Not sure what the lesson is here.
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