It's been several months now since the central image library went live. The images in the library are searchable by more than a dozen writers and designers in our organization and I can report that so far, so good.
We now have probably 120,000 images in the library and I add more every week. This requires a cache in Bridge of more than 24 gigabytes but we haven't noticed any general inability to find images in any given search. Seaching can be slow at times, depending on the complexity of the criteria selected and the number of images returned in the search results.
Remember, we are on new ground here: Adobe claims there is a limit of around "500,000" items but this is rather vague. For example, exactly what constitutes an "item"? Does that refer to each and every file type (such as sidecar xmp files for camera raw images)? How does one monitor those numbers? Also, how much space does the cache need to consume before the machine begins to slow down altogether? We just don't know.
The one singular challenge -- and it is important, believe me -- is to ensure that everyone's machine is up-t0-date in its indexing. What I mean is, that anytime a modification is made to a file in a given folder in the central library -- say metadata is added as information about a selection of images comes to light -- then that folder must be re-indexed by each machine in order for those images to be "searchable."
Also, I would suggest routine purging and rebuilding of the caches. Ideally, one might want to physically go in and remove the old cache and start fresh every few months or so. But this is not always feasible.
