Issues with CS2 / Bridge: help!

guitarkid · Apr 29, 2007

hey guys, i have this issue with CS2 / Bridge where all my photos look insanely over-saturated right when i view them for the first time in Bridge! You know that very pixelated overly-saturated look when there is not enough light? especially in the blacks? that is what i get with every photo...and flesh tones are blotchy, almost as if it's a poor graphics card or something. this is with RAW files AND jpg files. the same files in Microsoft windows and fax viewer look GREAT but Terrible in Adobe Bridge! i find myself editing photos i don't need to edit because bridge makes them look so messed up! i tried uninstalling / reinstalling CS2, with the same result. my cousin and i shot a wedding yesterday and he took the RAW files home and tried on his machine...they look great in CS2 / bridge over by him. it's not my video card since everything else looks great! it's just this bridge software. something is corrupted somewhere. any thoughts?

www.steverotter.com/1.jpg
IT'S GARBAGE! it looks NOTHING like this in MS window and fax viewer, OR any other program, even photoshop...just Bridge. i spent 6 hours trying to troubleshoot this so far. if i export the RAW file as a jpeg there are no issues.....bottom line....i can't view anything in Bridge without it looking like this! i think i'm going to either download Adobe lightroom or capture one. not sure which. this makes no sense.

thanks,
steve

CBRfanatic · Apr 30, 2007

go with lightroom, bridge works fine for me tho. Save you tons of headache if you just go and buy a mac

guitarkid · Apr 30, 2007

thanks, i am going to purchase lightroom now online mainly out of curiosity. i have thought of getting a mac just for photos but the pc tech / networking engineer in me won't let me do it. my entire recording studio, video production suite and photo studio is based on pc.
thanks,
Steve

CBRfanatic · Apr 30, 2007

guitarkid said:
thanks, i am going to purchase lightroom now online mainly out of curiosity. i have thought of getting a mac just for photos but the pc tech / networking engineer in me won't let me do it. my entire recording studio, video production suite and photo studio is based on pc.
thanks,
Steve

great thing about lightroom is it integrates with photoshop. also, download the demo before you buy. u could always find a way to use it after that :wink:

Mike_E · Apr 30, 2007

Go in and reset all the defaults in bridge (manually). Sounds like you have a curves adjustment that won't go away.

mike

guitarkid · Apr 30, 2007

mike, thanks, i will look at that, although, the curves look fine. it's odd. regarding the lightroom...i just saw on adobe's site that it is running at $199 until today....few hours i guess from now. then they are raising to $299. so it's now or never. i would rather not get it...but i'm sick of working on this issue. not sure what it could be. i did do an uninstall / uninstall of CS2...and ran updates again...no help. weird.

coastietech · Apr 30, 2007

You may want to make sure that your computer is compatible with Adobe Bridge before you drop another $199 on another Adobe program. If you ask me, I work with electronics and computers for a living, your computer doesn't have the necessary hardware to run Bridge. What are the specs for your computer? Could be that your video card is too slow or that the video card itself doesn't have enough memory so it is eating up the computer RAM. If the computer is already utilizing the RAM then the video card is not getting what it needs to run properly, hence the ****ty graphics.

guitarkid · Apr 30, 2007

hi Joe, thanks for the info. that is the tricky part. everything else looks awesome EXCEPT when i'm viewing through bridge. granted, not all photos look THIS bad in bridge (click link for example above) but it's still bad. so on this computer, all is great except for bridge. and even if i do NO editing in bridge and just export to jpg, it looks much better when opened and viewed in CS2....that same jpg in bridge is bad.

i'm running an Intel P4 3.6ghz with 4 gigs ram
video card is nvidia gforce 6800 with 256mb with recent drivers.
monitor and adobe are set for srgb
this should be more than adequate.
xp pro sp2 and i defrag often....very clean system. no MS office installed; just premiere and PS CS2.

steve

CBRfanatic · Apr 30, 2007

or it could be he has integrated graphics still, its a possibility. Also, do an activity monitor while you run bridge to see if your paging alot, if so then you probably need to upgrade the gpu.

guitarkid · Apr 30, 2007

nothing integrated, turned off in the bios. upgrade the gpu? do you mean cpu? hope that's not the case. not sure why the same raw files look great on my cousin't machine running CS2 with 2 gigs ram and a slightly slower processor. it's nuts

Flash Harry · May 1, 2007

I'd look at your preferences in bridge, could be your saturation settings in this program default too high, I also think this particular shot is underexposed, was exposure locked on her skin or was it matrix metering type, if so the white dress has caused the underexposure. H

Mike_E · May 1, 2007

Guitarkid, when you uninstall a program there is a history of the program left in the registry. Sometimes the last settings remain so try doing an uninstall and then clean your registry (if you don't have a reg cleaner program, you can get a trial but you will have to run it several times as it will only clean so many things per opening. If you are going to buy one-and you should clean out your registry regularly- try system mechanic. It does a whole lot more and is worth the price.).

Try here, it's $10 off right now.. http://www.iolo.com/sm/ads/landing/index.cfm?pid=445F2C56-41B2-449B-8E15-F880DD92137D

If you can run adobe then you should be able to run bridge. You also might go to the adobe site for information.

guitarkid · May 1, 2007

thanks guys, i will try that reg cleaner. first i will go in and manually remove any instances from the registry myself. haven't thought of that. it's worth a shot. you're right, that shot is a little underexposed but it doesn't look that bad on my cousin's machine with adobe bridge / cs2. i was so upset last night i downloaded lightroom to try it out and although i really don't want to switch, i ordered it. i really like the look of it and that photo doesn't look as bad in lightroom as it does in bridge. there is a difference. i just got to the point of giving up.....i may format the machine.....who knows. i appreciate all your help!!!
steve

coastietech · May 1, 2007

Considering the monster of a system you are running I would assume that the settings in bridge are your problem as well. Also be careful cleaning your registry, if you don't know what your are doing you could hose your system fairly easily. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Hope Lightroom fixes your problems.

guitarkid · May 1, 2007

thanks joe. i'm not sure what to look at in Bridge for settings. I have everywhere I can think of and found nothing. If anyone has a certain path they can point me to ..... file, setup, options, whatever, that would be great. what settings do you normally look at? Something like this should not be happening. It's just a GUI interface that should not change. I don't remember it ever being this bad! Seemed to happen when the new update came over about a month ago?
Steve