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Bridge is free and a nice tool. But it cannot read/show AP-files. As long as their is no Serif-DAM, its one of the best tools for managing your pictures. If you have just a small SSD i would trash all the other Adobe-stuff which are not necessary for just bridge, like creative suite, but keep bridge itself. That will give back a lot of space.

An alternative is XN-view, it can read AP-files, but the GUI is ugly as frankenstein.

OSX 12.5  / iMac Retina 27" / Radeon Pro 580X / Metall: on! --- WWG1WGA WW!

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I currently use Media Pro from Phase 1. It used to be called iView Media Pro before it was purchased first by Microsoft and then by Phase 1. Unfortunately neither of these two companies has done much in the way of further development of the product. It is an excellent DAM but has the downside that it does not support Afphoto or Afdesign files; also it is still 32 bit software. I read the other day that sometime in the next couple of years Apple is likely to require that all applications are 64 bit and therefore it will no longer be  possible to run Media Pro unless in a VM.

Then, a week or so ago I discovered a DAM product called Neofinder (Mac only) which is 64 bit and which does support Afphoto and Afdesign files. The cost for a single user licence is $40 but before you buy you can download a free trial version. Unlike Media Pro there seem to be regular new releases of the product. I recommend that you give it a try.

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10 hours ago, Polygonius said:

An alternative is XN-view, it can read AP-files, but the GUI is ugly as frankenstein.

Personally, I don't find the UI of Adobe Bridge much different from XnViewMP as far as ugliness, & I detest that to install Bridge separately from its other products, Adobe still requires installation of almost ½ GB of files that are completely unnecessary to use Bridge, some of which are, in typical Adobe fashion, tucked away in hard to find places on the startup drive.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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By my installation - there was more than just a half GB by installing Bridge... tons of CC-stuff was also installed. (I had a naked adobe-system, except flash of course).

It took some time to find all this (anywhere on the whole hd), but pathfinder is a nice help for stunts like this:-), also its startup-behavior....

Ok, is maybe question of taste, but in my opinion bridge looks most-times better than xnview. Also PS looks better (more clear / better divided / more visuell help by reading structure, "floats" have a "magnetic-place"...) than AP. But yeah, its also a question of taste, and i confess: i´m really sensitiv for UI (design and efficiency). I really get ill-humored by an uncomfortable and sloppily UI... (BTW: since when its called UI than GUI?).

OSX 12.5  / iMac Retina 27" / Radeon Pro 580X / Metall: on! --- WWG1WGA WW!

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I have used many digital asset management programs over the years, starting with, if I remember correctly, Canto Cumulus.  In most cases, I invested many hours building useful image databases that became unusable due to the program being abandoned or not being supported on a platform that I needed to use.

The program I use and have used for several years is Photo Supreme by Idimager.  It is provided both on Macs and PCs, is very capable in handling metadata, performs well with my 70,000 image database (even on my aged PC),  has strong developer and user forum support.  Importantly, it provides a mechanism by which you can move your images to a different DAM and retain the metadata that you have associated with each image.  This can save many, many hours of work.

It is not free, but I find it very well-priced for its value to me.  I highly recommend Photo Supreme.

 

David P

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15 hours ago, R C-R said:

Personally, I don't find the UI of Adobe Bridge much different from XnViewMP as far as ugliness, & I detest that to install Bridge separately from its other products, Adobe still requires installation of almost ½ GB of files that are completely unnecessary to use Bridge, some of which are, in typical Adobe fashion, tucked away in hard to find places on the startup drive.

Fortunately I have a legacy copy of Bridge CS3 which works independently of the CC platform. I use it as my frst port of call for a new batch of images as it has a quick and easy metadata template faclity. Following that, I use the Bulk Filename Utility to give my files meaningful names. After that I use ACDSee as my DAM.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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2 hours ago, John Rostron said:

Fortunately I have a legacy copy of Bridge CS3 which works independently of the CC platform.

AFAIK, Adobe Bridge CC 2018, currently at version 8.1.0.383 for Macs, also works independently of the CC apps. The (most) annoying thing about it is the installer insists on installing a lot of extra stuff. Even after ferreting out & removing the unneeded stuff, the Bridge app alone is 1.05 GB, plus a few 10's of MB of support files. In comparison, XnViewMP on Macs is a self-contained 106 MB app.

The thing that most annoys me about XnViewMP is not the UI (which can be configured somewhat like the Bridge one), it is the insane number of preferences & how they are organized that does. That sounds like a good thing, but in practice it makes finding something buried deep in a tabbed category quite difficult unless I stumble on a post somewhere that explains where it is hiding.

Even so, since it is fairly lightweight & displays previews of AD & AP documents, not to mention being free, it is what I prefer to use.

Edited by R C-R
fixed typo

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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57 minutes ago, R C-R said:

AFAIK, Adobe Bridge CC 2018, currently at version 8.1.0.383 for Macs, also works independently of the CC apps. The (most) annoying thing about it is the installer insists on installing a lot of extra stuff. Even after ferreting out & removing the unneeded stuff, the Bridge app alone is 1.05 GB, plus a few 10's of MB of support files. In comparison, XnViewMP on Macs is a self-contained 106 MB app.

I did try the current version of Bridge, but removed it fairly quickly when I saw the amount of junk that came with it and, more importaty, when I saw it tying me in to Adobe.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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Relevant to my earlier reply, I just received this notice from the Photo Supreme folks:

"MediaPro to Photo Supreme discount

MediaPro™ by PhaseOne was announced to be discontinued as of August 30, 2018. If you're an existing MediaPro user in need of extensive DAM features then you may want to consider Photo Supreme as your new DAM tool of choice. Many former MediaPro users have already made the switch.

MediaPro users can now switch to Photo Supreme with a 15% additional discount. Please send a proof of purchase* to support@idimager.com and get your coupon code today.

* Proof of purchase could be a purchase email confirmation or a screenshot that shows the registered state of MediaPro."

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I find Faststone quite useful as a DAM, RAW files are easily launched into Affinity Photo. Tagging and organizing is fairly straight forward, most RAW formats are supported but the only drawback is naive AP files aren't recognized.

Desktop: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, 32GB Ram, RTX 3070, LG 27" 4K 10Bit

Windows 11 22h2

Dell Laptop: i7 7700, 32GB Ram, GTX 1060, 16" 4K

Windows 10 22h2

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