I started using Bridge to organize my supplies when I got CS3 and yes, it can have a few lil problems at times but found that I didn't have many at all. It seemed pretty stable and worked nicely.
I recently upgraded to Bridge CS4 and it is way more stable and much faster. Its "little" improvements are amazing. However, I did have problems with keywords showing up in CS4. I am not sure if I needed to do something differently or if having Bridge CS3 still installed was causing problems. However, it only took me a few hours to re-keyword everything as it had become second nature to me and all the keyword structure was already set up. I couldn't find any help with anyone having this problem so guessing it is likely just a problem I had as if more people had it, there probably would be something about it somewhere on the web and I found nada, nothing.
Some improvements to it you might be interested in and I viewed as amazing reasons to upgrade to CS4 (in addition to the new amazing things added to Photoshop CS4):
1) instead of needing to use the "find", you can set up collections based on the find criteria. You can create your own collections or what I did was create smart collections which will keep pulling in any new additions. So based on my keywords, I have collections for paper, ribbons, etc. No more clicking the find & entering what I want to search for. Just have to click the already created collection and it pulls everything up. Makes it quick to pop from looking at papers to looking at ribbons to back to looking at papers.
2) similiar items that you don't want to necessarily see every individual one when you search through, you can "stack" and then mouse scroll through the stack or collapse/uncollapse the stack anytime to see all the items. I did this with my alphas.
Still learning all the new things but from the sounds of it, Bridge CS3 was the baby version and Bridge CS4 has reached adult stage in terms of development behind it. It is a full program on its own, no longer a kinda bridge between.
Still have the problem of don't go too fast or you will get the error that it can't tag that file. It can, you just have to give it a brief moment to write before you try to go to another folder. It shows the progress at the bottom so you know you can click back out and into another folder.
If you decide to upgrade, I am sure you will not be disappointed. If you love Bridge CS3, you will just fall in complete love with Bridge CS4.
|