CS3 Bridge & ACR 4.1 Soft Preview??

[jdryan3]

OK, I shot a bunch of pix at my son's soccer game the other day - nice and sunny. And when I got back and looked at them on my Mac Book Pro with Bridge, they looked sorta soft/slightly out of focus. Even using the loupe.

Images were made using a 5D w/ 70-200 f/2.8 (IS off) since I was shooting about 1/1600, or f/4 at 1/640. I saw what looked like only a few keepers. I was concerned my lens had focusing issues.

Then I verified that I was using AI Servo, I use CF4 (* button for AF), center focus, batteries were freshly recharged, lens clean. I even read the sports shooting tips sticky on the Sports Forum.

So today I opened up one of the few keepers in ACR 4.1 and...it was dead on perfect. I even turned off the sharpening in ACR (preview only), and the difference wasn't that great. I tweaked, cropped and closed it. But in Bridge, still soft. I opened a bunch more in ACR 4.1 and they also were as sharp as I would expect.

I've shot a lot of sports in the past, but I was using CS2 Bridge & ACR 3.x on a PC to process them. And I just don't remember the difference between the 2 apps being that significant. I don't think it is the Mac, but....

Has anyone else seen this? Did I miss a 'new' (or old) setting?

Here are samples of the pix converted to jpeg in ACR.
#1
http://www.jdryan3.com/photos/212241297-S.jpg

#2
http://www.jdryan3.com/photos/212242182-S.jpg

#3
http://www.jdryan3.com/photos/212240642-M.jpg

Any ideas? :dunno

[jfriend]

I have seen Bridge get into a mode where it won't generate sharp preview images for some images in a directory, even when the original RAW image is perfectly sharp. It's clearly some sort of bug with Bridge previews.

For me, I've only seen it happen in a directory with a lot of files (>500 RAW files). Here are some things you can try:

Shut-down and restart Bridge.
Make sure you aren't low on disk space
Purge your preview cache.
Purge the cached previews for this directory and wait for Bridge to regenerate new previews.
In Windows Explorer (not in Bridge), copy 10 images with the problem to a new directory, then point Bridge at the new directory and see if Bridge can handle these images when they are in a directory with only a few files in it.

[jdryan3]

I have seen Bridge get into a mode where it won't generate sharp preview images for some images in a directory, even when the original RAW image is perfectly sharp. It's clearly some sort of bug with Bridge previews.

For me, I've only seen it happen in a directory with a lot of files (>500 RAW files). Here are some things you can try:

Shut-down and restart Bridge.
Make sure you aren't low on disk space
Purge your preview cache.
Purge the cached previews for this directory and wait for Bridge to regenerate new previews.
In Windows Explorer (not in Bridge), copy 10 images with the problem to a new directory, then point Bridge at the new directory and see if Bridge can handle these images when they are in a directory with only a few files in it.

Great tips. The most interesting thing is the >500 images part. I used to copy my Raw from the CF to a directory. When I had a 300D, every 100 images had their own folder. 5D puts them all in the same, so I just copy them to my 'Current' (working) folder.

Before I moved to the Mac from a PC, I would keyword and rank my images, then move them to a folder based upon their rank/status. When I moved to the Mac and got Lightroom also, I decided to let the software do its job and keep all the images in one folder. Then I would use only keywords, labels, & rankings as filters. So I gotta have 3000+ RAW images in my main folder. Doesn't seem like a lot, really.

I'll purge the cache and try a a small sample folder of images to test your suggestions.