I am having the exact same problem with my file associations. Though mine has gone one step further in that I can’t even assign Illustrator associations manually. No matter how many times I try Illustrator will not come up as a choice… even if I select the .exe to associate it.
I noticed in windows explorer that some of the file associations were still pointing to Photoshop CS2, although Bridge would open them in Photoshop CS4. I went in to the Tools > Folder Options>File Types found the file type and clicked the reset button, this reset them to CS4. It could have been because I had manually changed them to CS2 some time ago.
I saw the Bridge file association strangeness as well. Immediately after installing PS CS4 and Bridge, TIFFs and JPEGs were set to open in Illustrator!
The problem is not with Bridge for me, that opens files the way it should since its file associations are handled separately. It is when I try to open a file outside of bridge that there are issues. And no amount of Vista file association fiddling fixes it.
It would be great to know just where Bridge stores its file association info (or where it gets it from) and where it’s something that can be editable? It seems to be coming from somewhere else than the Registry or the File Types settings in Folder Options. Is there a Bridge Preferences file that stores the Associations?
Russell
I have the same problem. I was able to associate jpgs with Bridge, but cannot do so with CS4 OR Lightroom2. I’ve tried to change within Vista and also within the two programs. No luck. Is there a way to fix this or is it a bug?
It’s a Windows issue.
In the chooser you can click the ‘Browse’ button locate the file for example C:\Program files\Adobe\Adobe PhotoshopCS4\Photoshop.exe click it and nothing happens!
Wow – I’m having the same issue after I installed CS4 web standard, and removed CS3 Web Standard. Using Win XP pro, fully patched up. Can’t associated PNG with Fireworks, all my icons in other folders now show the generic unknown file icon.
It’s a registry key not being updated/ deleted. If you search your registry under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, you may find your associations still set to Photoshop.Image.10 or so. Deleting these faulty entries should release the setting and allow you to associate PSDs via Explorer. A user provided a detailed explanation a week ago or so, I just never remember the links to those threads. Sorry. A quick search or sifting through the pages should turn it up, though. Ss for Bride’s own associations, they are stored in C:\ProgramFiles\Adobe\Adobe Bridge CS4\Resources\Adobe Bridge opener Preferences.xml.
Mylenium
In another thread, one user reported success simply by running a registry cleaner. He was using CCleaner.
CCleaner did the trick for me. Thank the heavens! 🙂
set HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.psd\default as Photoshop.Image.11 and make sure your HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Photoshop.Image.11\shell\open\command is set to position where your application is installed
It will work without Bridge
You can change the association (eg: .psd) in Vista with "Set Associations" (type "Programs" in your Start menu box, choose Default Programs, then click on "Associate a file type of protocol with a program")
Adobe… come on folks, fix it… most of us only uninstall CS3 after we install CS4, no need to wipe out all the file associations – or at least give us a utility to restore them all. I spent how much $ for this?
Roger,
That’s what I thought too, but it’s apparently deeper than that. It’s a registry key that fails to update, or something, and just setting file associations doesn’t work. Registry clean does, or so it seems.
Restoring file associations through the default methods like you suggested Roger does not work for all the Adobe programs affected by this bug. In fact I am sure all of us tried doing that… which is why we are on here trying to figure out why something so simple and easy is not working. Illustrator being a perfect example. No matter how many times you try to tell the OS to open an .ai file with Illustrator, it will not. The only solution I have found for this is to run a CCleaner or another type of registry cleaner. This seems to yank out all the corrupted file association registry entries (presumably from CS3) so you can then once again manually replace them with the proper program associations.
CCleaner did the trick for me too!
But I still suspect something about CS4 installer is not right.
Under CS3 I used Vista "open with">"choose program">"always use" to assiciate bridge CS3 with my canon camera raw files.. At that time it did work.
After installing CS4, I wanted to do the same with bridge CS4 but it didnt work. In the "choose program" vista menu, whatever I was doing, I couldnt select bridge CS4 it was always comming back to photoshop cs4 or bridge cs3.
After using CCleaner, I could re-associate the way I want right away.
So my word to photoshop’s installer developper: please try to reproduce this issue, it should be easy, and make the installer avoid this.
Thanks
I had the flip side show up in that uninstalling CS4 required me to re-associate the files to CS3 Photoshop. I’m told this is SOP for backwards compatibility, although I don’t know why it should be so.
I did a registry clean as well.
