Migrating From Bridge CS4 to CS5

While Photoshop tends to get most of the press during major upgrades, Bridge users have a few things to be happy about with the CS5 release. The new Export tab, which bundles Photoshop Image Processor-like functionality right into Bridge; the Mini Bridge which bundles Bridge right into Photoshop; new Batch Rename functionality and new Output features, and other tweaks and modifications make Bridge CS5 a welcome upgrade. Unfortunately, as with Photoshop, Adobe has not seen fit to add any migration features for moving Bridge database information into CS5. However, with a few file copies, it appears that you can move the bulk of your important Bridge data to the new version.

First, note that there doesn’t appear to be any way to move Favorites from CS4 to CS5. So, if you’ve filled up the Favorites tab with a lot of locations, you’ll simply have to rebuild those favorites from scratch. Creating Favorites is a simple drag-and-drop, so this isn’t too burdensome of a process.

What I was most concerned about migrating were my collections, and my keywords, and on the Mac, you can do this with a simple file copy. In the Finder, navigate to ~ > Library > Application Support > Adobe > Bridge CS4. Open another window and navigate to ~ > Library > Adobe > Application Support > Bridge CS5.

If you want to copy your keywords, just copy the Adobe Bridge Keywords.xml file from the CS4 directory to the CS5 directory. Similarly, you can take your Collections by copying the Collections folder. As you can see, there are other preferences you can move.

After copying the files, restart Bridge CS5 and you should see all of your Keywords in the Keywords panel, and your Collections in the Collections tab.

If you move your CS4 Collections data, you may find that, after you restart Bridge CS5, your Export panel has disappeared. Choose Window > Export to reactivate it. You can also choose Workspace > Reset Workspace, to set the workspace back to its default configuration, without wiping out your Collections. Obviously, any other changes you’ve made to that workspace will be wiped out.

Windows users, I’m sorry but I don’t have a Windows install at the moment, but if someone else wants to figure out the equivalent directories, that would be great.

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