Chris and Katie Humphreys

Speaking of Cache...

Sorry I've been a bit absent lately!  We're having too much funny with Shy!  (although her favorite hideout right now is under my dresser in the bedroom!

Two more tips on ways to use cache with Bridge.  First of all, not sure if you guys saw the comment Tim Halberg left on my last post on cache taking up disk space.  He basically outlined another way to take care of the problem.  Instead of having Bridge save all the cache files in one folder it saves each of them inside of the folder that you cached.  Here's his comment.
 

Here's the option he's talking about under the Bridge Preferences:

Also, one other quick tip as far as caching folders.  Save your images inside a seperate folder within your main folder so you can pre-cache your images.  Here's what I mean. 

The way we have our folders set up is to have a main folder for the couple and then inside that folder we have another folder called "RAW" which is where we save our files.  When you have your folder system set up that way you can have Bridge pre-cache your files while your doing something else.  To do that in Bridge open up the folder with the couple's name so that all is showing is your "RAW" folder.  Then go to Tools-->Cache-->Build Cache for Subfolders.  Bridge will then process all your thumbnails (much faster than it would if you just opened up the folder since it doesn't need to actually use the processor to display the images).  In the meantime, you can go grab lunch or do something else while it's processing and then when it's finished and you open up the folder all the files will be ready to go.   By the way, this will work for JPEGs as well if you're not a RAW shooter. 

Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks so much to Tim for sharing that tip! 

Need Hard Drive Space?

A trend I'd been noticing for quite some time in my laptop was that I found that I was constantly running out of space on my hard drive. I have a 80 gig hard drive in my Powerbook, and I keep hardly any images on there, but I was constantly out of space, always within 4-5 gigs of being totally full.

On my way down to Mexico on the plane I resolved to figure this out and figure out where all this hard drive space was being used up. After much searching I finally figured it out.

Bridge Cache files.

When you open up a folder in CS2 (or 3) Bridge it loads all the thumbnails and saves it as a cache file so that the next time you open the folder it remembers what's in it. Each individual file is super small, but together they add up. And after a while they REALLY add up. In the case of my Powerbook, they added up to a little over 23 gigs!. I just checked on my Mac Pro which I've only had since the fall and it's already gathered about 19 gigs of those little files. On a desktop where you have several hundred gigs of hard drive space that's probably not a huge issue, but on a laptop that can add up to a significant percentage of your hard drive. So if you haven't done it in a while (or ever!) check and see how big that folder is.

Here's how to find it.

On a Mac go to:

Finder --> Library --> Application Support --> Adobe --> Bridge --> Cache --> Thumbnails

I'm not sure how to do it on Windows since we're exclusive Mac users, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

Remember that once you do this Bridge will have to rebuild your cache files for your different folders. Most folders that Bridge has saved the files for you likely won't use again since they're probably old, so while it might be a pain to have to rebuild the folders for the few that you use all the time the hard drive space you buy yourself may be well worth the small sacrafice!

Hope you all have a GREAT weekend an a most blessed Mother's Day!

Unlimited Online Backup for Macs

Obviously in the digital age backup is key.  We rely a little bit on .Mac and a lot on external hard drives.  When Leopard (the next version of Mac OSX comes out) Time Machine will be huge in allowing easy and systematic backups of files.  However, online backups are great and essential as well.  Check out mozy.com.  They're offering unlimited online backups for just under $5 a month.  It allows you to encrypt and automatically backup all of your files.  For us, Pictage our lab does this very well for our wedding images, but Mozy would be great for things like iTunes libraries, video files, word docs, etc etc.  What's great too is you can request your files back either by FTPing them or requesting a DVD with next day delivery.  Check it out, this looks like a great tool!

Upgrading Your Mac?

Planning on upgrading your Mac or switching from Windows to Mac?  There's nothing more frustrating than buying something and then hearing two weeks later that that product line just got upgraded.

MacRumors has a great section of their website dedicated to acting as a buyer's guide letting you know when to expect updates to different aspects of Apple's lineup.  It's not just for computers, but also for iPods, Cinema Displays, etc etc. 

Check it out here

Also, I know lots of you were waiting to upgrade your G5 towers to Mac Pro's once the CS3 came out.  As you may know Apple just updated their Mac Pro Line to the new 8 Core Mac Pros.

While I'm usually a fan of purchasing the biggest and best available at the time, this time I don't for three main reasons. 

1.  The Apps. Most apps right now (and even operating systems) aren't written to use 8 cores and particularly apps that photographers use won't see much of a speed boost for 4 to 8 cores.  Barefeats just released some early tests comparing real world performance differences between the 4 and 8 core machines and while some video applications saw some fairly substantial performance boosts, apps like Photoshop CS3 and Aperture 1.5 didn't.  You can see their test results here.

2.  The Mac Pro's are upgradable.  Unlike the older G4/G5 towers the processors in the Mac Pros are upgradable.  In a few years when prices have come down and the apps are better written to support it, you'll be able to purchase a pair of Quad Core processors and put them in your existing machine. 

3.  Price.  At this point the extra $1500 for the 8 core version just doesn't seem to be worth it.  As the applications are increasingly written to take advantage of the extra cores and the price comes down a bit, it might be worth it. 

We pulled the trigger on a 3.0 ghz Quad Core Mac Pro last September and have been really happy with it.  I don't regret at all not waiting for the 8 core machines. Regardless which machine you opt for, word on the street is that Adobe is now shipping CS3 so this would be a great time to upgrade those G5 PowerMacs if you've been waiting for the Intel native versions of Photoshop. 

Enjoy!!