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I also do freelance design and usability via dejligt.com

Does It Exist: Adobe Bridge Without The Suckage?

    13:24 on March 27, 2007 , ,

Working with lots of various image formats, I often need to explore folders with a sort of “thumbnail view” enabled. Usually, either the OS or Picasa does just fine. Sometimes, however, I’m in need of exploring folders containing Adobe Illustrator AI files, EPS files or other vectorized file formats. In these cases, neither Picasa or the OS will do. Currently, I’m stuck with Adobe Bridge as the only software that can show me vector and bitmap image thumbnails side by side. Alas, Bridge sucks more than a collapsed dwarf star.

Is there an alternative? (I’m looking for a Windows alternative, but Mac users are welcome to chime in).

Comments

  1. Maarten Leewis says:
    March 27, 2007 at 13:56

    Give Canto Cumulus a try…

  2. Stefan says:
    March 27, 2007 at 14:18

    I searched a long time but found no alternative? I hope Bridge CS3 will have improved speed, caching and meta-data handling.

  3. steph says:
    March 27, 2007 at 19:22

    xnview displays ai, eps.. it’s ffast and free for personal use.

    http://www.xnview.com/

  4. Joen says:
    March 27, 2007 at 19:51

    Some good suggestions here. I’ll try’em out eventually. Keep’em coming, though… Perhaps there’s a gem out there still.

  5. Joen says:
    March 28, 2007 at 20:48

    According to the Adobe CS3 webcast, Bridge CS3 is faster.

    I don’t believe it until I see it, though.

  6. Tanja says:
    April 3, 2007 at 13:33

    Thank you Steph for your suggestion: I love xnview !!

  7. franco says:
    April 29, 2008 at 13:55

    Hey man, i have the same problem!

    Take a look at this: http://bluemarine.tidalwave.it/

    I will try it right now.

    At least seems to be a more serious alternative to Bridge.

  8. Scott says:
    September 2, 2008 at 21:16

    Thanks for this post! Bridge CS3 sucks seriously hard on my G5 Mac (Leopard). Crashes more than Billy Joel….

  9. Scott says:
    September 3, 2008 at 00:36

    Alas, neither bluemarine nor xnview worked for me. (But Bridge still sucks.)

    The hunt continues!!

  10. Schwabe says:
    September 13, 2008 at 06:41

    Have just tried Bridge today for the first time. It’s a savior for browsing my huge vector library… when it works. Tremendously slow and I cannot get it to build cache for my directories without crashing.

    ALSO looking for recommendations here – let’s keep the hunt on.

  11. Jeff Berner says:
    June 26, 2009 at 18:08

    Check out Photo Mechanic for QUICK browsing of RAW files.

  12. AnbroK says:
    October 20, 2009 at 14:02

    Great options here guys!
    I’ll give a try to xnview ’cause it looks like it’s the lighest one but I do hope it can view thumbnails from eps, ai and photoshop ’cause Bridge sucks – too much RAM memory usage!!!

  13. AnbroK says:
    October 20, 2009 at 14:11

    XnView works good! Less memory usage than bridge CS3 but… not as good as it!
    Will keep using it!