Sunday, September 13, 2009

Progress on Sharing Images in a Central Library using Bridge

So far, so good pretty much sums it up. I've held two training sessions with one last one to be given this coming Tuesday -- by then everyone in my client's creative department will have at least had the introductory training session. So far three designers are online and have fully indexed the central library on their respective copies of Bridge; they seem to be searching across the library with no problems.

The remainder of the group's design teams, for both print and web will be indexed this week and searching the library.

I just added a new folder of more than 2k images this last Friday. After informing those designers who had already finished indexing they just went in and a few moments later had indexed the new set of image files -- again, no problem. So adding new folders of image files seems to present little if any challenge.

The next month or so will see virtually everyone in the creative services with access to the library. The next challenge will be fine tuning the keyword strategy.

Also, another ongoing set of issues surrounds the varying level of competency with computers, the specific OS and degrees of competence in picking up new software tools.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Important update on image file sharing!

We are presently moving ahead with opening access to the new central image library to our designers and other members of the group.

My initial idea about copying the cache files to each machine' Bridge program is now dubious. I noticed on my second testing machine (a Mac Pro tower) that while on the face of it copying the cache files did indeed seem to expedite the process of indexing the many folders in the library, I observed that Bridge was creating a duplicate folder in both the 256 and 1024 (thumb and preview folders respectively) and also apparently duplicating the BridgeStor files as well.

Naturally this would double the already huge cache size.

Perhaps it was a phenomenon unique to that particular machine but at this point I don't have the time -- or the inclination -- to keep testing to see whether we can in fact share cache files.

We do know that once each member of the group accesses the library they can begin the process of indexing via their own machine/Bridge and ultimately be ready to search the library.

So, what I've opted to do is to simply provide the path to the new central library and then have each designer begin indexing the folders locally. This way it should keep the each person's cache clean -- or at least as clean as possible.