Bridge Photo Downloader

[Ben Rubinstein]

I just timed the download of a card from the downloader (CS4) and the rendering of previews. The download was exactly the same speed as using windows explorer with drag and drop and the thumbnail rendering took twice as long (to the second) with the downloader rather than drag and drop and open the folder in Bridge.

Now I know the downloader gives the option of adding a couple of lines of metadata (takes seconds to do for a folder anyway) and the option to convert to DNG (useful if you do), rename, yada yada yada.

For a guy like me who is downloading 20 gig from a shoot, all into the same folder, without conversion and without renaming, am I gaining anything other than slower rendering?

Serious question guys, not trying to be sarcastic, just want to know if there is any benefit for me. I thought that maybe the .xmp files (camera raw defaults) would be written as the files are imported but they obviously are not. It's cute to have the application within Bridge ala LR but am I missing something important? Can anyone tell me why I should be using it rather than just copying files over via explorer?

What I did notice in either case with Bridge CS4 is that if you let bridge render the previews while the files are copying then by the time they are copied over, all the previews are done. Certainly wasn't like that in CS3! Well done Adobe for getting that right, I had been using Bridge CS2 for all the sorting and Bridge CS3 for the newer ACR just because CS3 was so horribly sluggish at rendering thumbnails, previews, etc.

[Farkled]

My take on the subject is that the answer depends on whether or not the added value Bridge gives you is worth it to you.  In my case, I'll be opening those files in Bridge, sometime, anyway, so it has to render them anyway.  Might just as well gain the added value and move on.  If you are seldom going to open Bridge then it might be of little value to you.

[jjj]

I don't use Bridge to DL, as I do not want Bridge to do anything to files until after copying to 2 separate places and all data checked compared to camera card. But when testing CS4 I do recall people commenting on how much faster Bridge was than using Windows to copy. And I'm sure it was when I timed it.
Bridge is generally very fast compared to earlier versions and it is well worth learning how useful it can be.

[Ben Rubinstein]

I don't use Bridge to DL, as I do not want Bridge to do anything to files until after copying to 2 separate places and all data checked compared to camera card. But when testing CS4 I do recall people commenting on how much faster Bridge was than using Windows to copy. And I'm sure it was when I timed it.
Bridge is generally very fast compared to earlier versions and it is well worth learning how useful it can be.

I am a serious bridge user, use it far more than PS which is more or less used 90% of the time just to run actions on the files I've worked in ACR. Especially now with the brush tools in ACR!

I've already upgraded to CS4.

From my testing using the Photo Download tool writes nothing but the metadata (if you specify), the XMP files are not written until the folder is viewed in Bridge! As such as far as I can see it does nothing except copy files over at exactly the same speed as windows does (I timed it twice either way with two cards, one full, one half full).

Another thing I'm impressed with in CS4 is that Bridge copied over all my screen presets and the ACR presets from CS3 so I didn't have to build them all again. Nice touch, CS3 didn't do that from CS2 and it's a pain getting everything 'right' again in a new program.

[Ben Rubinstein]

I wrote a statement saying that Bridge CS4 was slower still than CS2 at rendering previews. I was mistaken and have since deleted that comment

In a timed race with cleared cache on a couple of folders of RAW images:

300 RAW images, to render full quality preview:

CS2 - 5 minutes
CS4 - 4.5 minutes

Time to show embedded thumbnail (i.e. not just the .CRW logo):

CS2 - 20 seconds
CS4 - 10 seconds

Nice one Adobe. Now all I need to do is get a quad core with 8 gig of ram and a 64 bit operating system and I might be able to review a shoot of 1200 files without having to change a laptop battery in between!      

Would it be worth me upgrading the video card  (I have a Geforce 6200 512mb) to gain rendering speed in Bridge, i.e. for speeding up 100% previews, etc or will that not help?