Using Adobe CS3 Bridge across more than one computer.

[GoldZilla]

Hey everyone,

I've had my camera for just over a year now, and recently started attempting to catalogue all my photos using Adobe Bridge in CS3.

Seeing as own a desktop, a laptop and I've just bought myself a new laptop (to replace the first), I've got my photos spread out over 3 PCs. The laptop is used, typically, mainly for storing photos on the go, but sometimes I do editing on it, and I've experimented with tethered shooting too.

Now, storing photos and making sure you don't have duplicates is a task in itself, so I'm hoping some of you can help me here with a few questions:

• is there any way I can copy all the keywords/tags, metadata and changes I've made across from one PC to another?
• is there a way I can search for and erase duplicates of the same photos?
• if I were to build an NAS (with mirrored drives for data security in case one fails), would this be the best way to store the photos, and would I be able to copy all the required data as per above?

At the moment, I'm trying to store all my photos together on an external drive, but I'm uncertain whether or not all the data (tags, changes to the RAW files) is carried across and "recognised" by Bridge on another PC.

Oh, and I'll warn you all now that I'm still a bit of a newb when it comes to Photoshop and Bridge - please provide as much explanation as possible, thanks!

[ricktas]

You would need the pc's to be networked, preferably. You need to find out how bridge builds is catalogue and what that file is called and where it is saved on one of the computers. You would then need to move the catalogue file (one of them that you want all computers to use) to the external drive and point each incidence of bridge on the various pc's to that one file. Be aware that bridge may only allow one pc to be accessing the catalogue file at a time.

Google might assist in finding how bridge builds it's catalogue, what it is called, what the filename is likely to be etc, and even where it is possibly saved. You will also need to ascertain how to redirect bridge to the new file location when you move it.

[GoldZilla]

Thanks Rick.

All the computers are already networked. I'll do a Google search to see if any more answers will be revealed. In the mean time, any more clues on how successful (or not) I will be would be appreciated.

[ricktas]

As long as it is possible to find out how bridge stores its database and what that file is called, you should readily be able to point each incidence of bridge to the same database. I think the hard bit might be finding out what it is called and how to direct bridge on the other pc's to link to it.