Adobe Photoshop Lightroom vs. The Adobe Bridge
This article is a follow-up to a recent post on how Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom differ.
On the surface the Adobe Bridge, particularly Bridge CS4, looks a lot like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Beneath the surface though there are two fundamental differences. First and foremost, the Bridge is a “browser” which means that you have to tell it where to go when you want to look for your digital media files. Lightroom, on the other hand, is a database. I go to Lightroom and use its search box when I want to find files whose location–the exact sub-folder where the file lives–has slipped out of my memory.
For photographer’s the difference between Bridge, the file browser, and Lightroom, the catalog maker, is most noticeable when you are searching for one particular image. For this example, let’s pretend that you have twenty-thousand images spread across three hard drives and countless sub-folders. Let’s also pretend that every one of these files has been already been connected with your Lightroom database (ie. that we have imported everything) and that all of our files have meaningful metadata.
If we were to use Bridge to search for the one image out of our twenty-thousand that has both the keyword “landscape” and a five-star rating, our search would take the Bridge a very long-time. With enough time the Bridge would eventually discover the appropriate file, but this search is going to take a while. If you were to then decide that you want to see both your four-star and your five-star quality landscapes then the Bridge’s search engine has to start the entire hunt all again. Again the results will be painfully slow.
Bridge’s searches never get any faster because it is simply a browser. As a browser, the Adobe Bridge keeps no records about the metadata that it finds inside of each and every file. With Lightroom though either of these searches would produce almost instantaneous results.
Lightroom would find the appropriate files even if the hard drive where they actually live is not turned on or connected. [Not that this would help you much but Lightroom can index files even if they are "offline.] Lightroom’s search results are blazing fast because its database makes a copy of each and every file’s metadata. Since Lightroom builds its own index, it’s own database, the program does not need to repeatedly crawl through each and every folder on each and every hard drive to fulfill a metadata search query so search results are blazing fast.
Although the Bridge is not an efficient tool for digital image management it is a wonderful tool when you need to connect multiple types of media together. Bridge is the tool of choice for multimedia projects where you need to mix photographs, logos / vector art, audio tracks, and movie clips all into a polished project. Here the Bridge lives up to its name; literally it bridges Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, and InDesign together.
Lightroom, sadly, can only help me find my photographs. All of these other files types are beyond its scope but for folks who do this kind of work the Bridge is critical when we want to connect all these parts together.
For a detailed discussion of the Adobe Bridge vs. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom workflow comparison please watch this excellent video tutorial from Adobe Evangelist Julieanne Kost.
Filed Under: (12) FAQ
About the Author: David Marx is a digital photography instructor whose engaging teaching style inspires photographers of all skill levels. David is an Adobe Certified Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom Expert. David has led Adobe Photoshop / Photoshop Lightroom seminars and digital photography field workshops for The Rocky Mountain School of Photography, FirstLight Workshops, The American Society of Media Photographers, and the world-renowned Blackberry Farm Resort. To learn more about David's software seminars and field photography workshops, please visit 
This article largely misses the point about the larger benefit of using Lightroom, namely non-destructive, detailed, batch editing of photos. This is something Bridge can’t do; indeed, it isn’t meant to. If you are a professional photographer, then this program is a MUST for all your processing and organizing needs. If you are just an amateur who has a bunch of random files that you’d like to browse through, then Bridge is enough.
I do think Bridge is amazingly valuable when used, as mentioned above, to view a variety of formats when working on a project that has such varied support files.
Neither program is meant to replace the other. They are both needed for their own purposes. They just happen to overlap in a couple of areas.
Dear Paul Smith,
I agree with you what Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and what Photoshop CS5 offer the professional photographer. Both are wonderful tools in the right hands and they have different, though overlapping, capabilities. I would suggest though that spending $600 for Photoshop CS5 / Bridge is an awfully high price for most amateurs. For this audience I would suggest other simpler tools like the Organizer in the new Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 program.
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David Marx
@Paul: Actually, that’s not true. Bridge can be used to batch process photos non-desctructively using “Open in Camera Raw” which can be done with not only raw files, but jpegs as well.
@Jason: Um, then it isn’t really Bridge doing the editing, is it? That would be Camera Raw doing it.
Does it matter? Since Camera Raw is not a standalone app, one needs either Bridge, Photoshop, or Lightroom to utilize it. They all use the same Adobe Camera Raw engine/algorithms (does anyone really care that Bridge pops open the Raw processer in a panel? I think not)….. point being you don’t need Lightroom to batch process images if you have Bridge. Saying Bridge can’t do this, as you did in your original post is pretty misleading. Adobe Camera Raw is pretty nicely integrated into Bridge in my opinion, and as I have and use both Bridge and Lightroom, I’d have to say Bridge holds its own when it comes to batch processing, and in many ways is easier to use than Lightroom. Lightroom was basically created as an inexpensive alternative for photographers who don’t need all that Photoshop offers. It may or may not offer an improved workflow for some, but If you already have Photoshop/Bridge, you certainly don’t need Lightroom.
You bring up some good points, but the logic on the standalonability of Camera Raw doesn’t make sense. The issue at hand isn’t whether or not CR can open on its own, it whether or not Bridge needs an external program to handle the editing.
So yes, in a technical sense, Bridge can do non-destructive editing. I stand corrected on my wording. But won’t go along with your assesment of Light as being “…basically created as an inexpensive alternative for photographers who don’t need all that Photoshop offers.”
Wikipedia says it clearly:
“Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a photography software program developed by Adobe Systems…designed to assist Adobe Photoshop users in managing large quantities of digital images and doing post production work. It is not a file browser like Adobe Bridge, but rather an image management application database which helps in viewing, editing, and managing digital photos, the same way photographers used to do in the non-digital world.”
The big difference between LR and PS is that Lightroom is designed from the ground up with professional photographers in mind mind. Indeed, many were directly consulted in its development. So it’s not a stripped down Photoshop, like Elements is. It is its own animal to serve a different need.
I do also use Bridge, on a daily basis. It excels as a file browser as it pertains to graphic work. But it is certainly no substitute for Lightroom. And I feel equally as strong about the other way around. Both programs serve a very valuable specific purposes, even if there are areas where they overlap.
Dear Paul and Jason,
I appreciate the spirited debate on this post. For some photographers Bridge > ACR > Photoshop is a fine tool but for most of us Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is more efficient once you understand how the Lightroom Catalog functions. As an Adobe Certified Expert in both Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CS5 and as an Adobe Beta tester I can assure you that Lightroom is not a “stripped down inexpensive alternative.” Most of the improvements that we see in Bridge CS5 or CS6 are actually spin offs from the Lightroom engineering team’s efforts rather than the other way around.
In my opinion the real conclusion to this debate is to say that there are lots of tools out there for image management and enhancement. The key is to find the tools that best suit your specific needs and to continually seek efficiency and image quality.
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David Marx
Thank you very much David, for weighing in. It was getting frustrating having my praise for Lightroom taken as a slight on Bridge. As I’d stated a couple times, I use both regularly, and love them for their strengths.
I was also particularly perturbed at the slights on Lightroom. It would seem that one could only take that stance if one hasn’t fully learned to take advantage of it all that it has to offer. It is truly a God-send to professional photographers everywhere. Thanks again David.
Ok. no point arguing what Lightroom does. That wasn’t the point.
I believe you started with “This article largely misses the point about the larger benefit of using Lightroom, namely non-destructive, detailed, batch editing of photos. This is something Bridge can’t do;”
I simply want those who haven’t used bridge since CS2 to give it a second look. It’s come along way and batch processing is no longer a thing you have to create and run through photoshop. In Bridge, you can simply select multiple photos and adjust them simulatneously (and see a live preview of the changes being made). These are non-desctructive editing done to a batch of photos.
Bridge does work for this. Lightroom is not needed for this. simple as that.
Lightroom has some excellent features (cataloguing for example) that bridge doesn’t do well (its collections feature is no substitute for LR), but people need to stop going around dissing on Bridge based on what it did 7 years ago in CS2.
First off, I’m not dissing Bridge. I love Bridge. I also conceded the point that Bridge can do non-destructive editing, also that is still with the caveat that it isn’t actually doing it: Camera Raw is. Camera Raw IS a separate program, albeit in plug-in form. No it can’t be purchased separately, but it is indeed separate. You say that Bridge and Lightroom both use Camera Raw as their graphic engine, but that is not correct. Camera Raw and Lightroom are the ones that share common guts. Bridge does not contains those guts. It defers to CR to handle that stuff.
If you only have Bridge, then yes by all means, it can pull its weight at also you to do the batch editing that Photoshop doesn’t do easily. But it still isn’t as easily done as in LR. In LR you select a few photos, drag a slider, and you’re done. In Bridge, you select a few photos, click the ‘Open in Camera Raw’ button, wait for it to open, then you have to hit ‘Select All’ THEN make your edits. And if you want to add in any other photos that you didn’t already have selected, then you have to exit CR and start that process all over again.
This website does an excellent job of explaining the differences/strengths of all four programs: http://goo.gl/GlhOI
But seriously, I use both almost every single day, and am very familiar with both, and wouldn’t want to do my work without either one of them.
This passive aggressiveness isn’t necessary. It’s fine if you assume I haven’t “fully learned to take advantage” of all Lightroom has to offer. I have and do use it to it’s full potential. Personally I don’t use bridge as part of my daily workflow, but I think it offers alot for those who Have PS/Bridge and don’t want to puchase Lightroom. I agree fully that Lightroom is a better tool for photo asset management that any photographer could benefit from. To say Bridge is merely a file browser (ignoring it’s ACR integration) seems an attempt at misinformation. I’m glad you’ve conceded your original statement to the contrary was inaccurate. Unfortunately this thread has devolved into a crazy series of rebuttals that miss the simple point I was trying to make initially.
I’m just about ready to say that we are agree. I’d only like to reiterate one point: Bridge IS a browser. It is a browser that kicks butt if you are using any or all of the plethora of Adobe programs available. There was zero intent of misinformation. I am in no way wishing to talk negatively about it. From the beginning I was merely discussing how one was better than the other for a certain purposes. I admitted that one thing I said was incorrect, but then you proceeded to say that Lightroom was just a poor-man’s-Photoshop that isn’t really needed. Talk about misinformation!
One thing I think we’ll both unequivocally agree on is that Adobe has provided us all with a wonderfully powerful set of tools to accomplish things easily, and in a number of different ways.
Thank you for your time in engaging in this discussion.
There is no need to replace Bridge…
For me, PS5 and Bridge in addition to the Canon RAW plugin works perfect. There is absolutely no need for me to purchase Lightroom.
David: Is it possible to use Lightroom with files stored on a remote server or in the “cloud”?
Dear Charlie K,
Sadly Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is not a cloud ready application yet. I have not tried it but the brand new Adobe Carousel system uses some of Lightroom’s underlying code in a cloud computing environment.
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David Marx
David
What you did not make clear (I think) in your reply to Larry, is that not only do Lightroom and Bridge develop raw photos in the same way (as you say “same controls, different face plate”), but they are completely compatible as long as you save metadata in Lightroom. Then when you make a change in Bridge to the raw file (change crop, for instance), the change will be available the next time you use Lightroom, as long as you update your metadata. Similarly, if you save metadata in Lightroom (or have it automatically saved), then the changes will be seen in Bridge.
Without this, the two can get out of sync.
Dear Alan Harper,
Good point about the need to update the metadata. For simplicity though I suggest that Lightroom users avoid making any changes in the Bridge.
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David Marx
Thanks for an excellent article!
I’ve recently bought Lightroom after having used Bridge for years. I still want to continue organizing my photos into descriptively named folders on my hard-drives (e.g. “Photos/2010/vacations/Easter/”) after having imported them, but want the added benefit of organizing things further in Lightroom using collections, adding keywords, editing and printing without using Photoshop for most stuff etc.
I also see that Lightroom’s import feature is a lot more advanced than the Photo importer in Bridge (among other things the ability to import from folders and back up to a 2nd drive on the fly).
So what would be the most efficient workflow for importing and organizing photos this way?
Thanks David, this is by far the most cogent and concise explanation of both applications. I had decided not to purchase Lightroom because I have Canon’s raw converter and Bridge. After your explanation I see that there is indeed value in obtaining Lightroom.
Although I am a novice user, I believe that Bridge DOES allow for the creation of sets based on a label assigned in the naming process- see tutorial video 96 (Filter & Find) on the Install Disk for CS3.
Thanks for the insight David. I consider upgrading LR 2 and CS3. Big question: do you have only one catalog for all your pictures? otherwise you couldnt search all your images for a keword, as you described. (?) I have separate catalogs, because big catalogs get very slow. And of course I have many different categories. So if i want to find a picture, first i have to know in which catalog it is, and People/Landscapes/Travel… are kind of intersecting. That is my biggest issue with LR 2. I feel like i’m doing something wrong.
It’s like an additional step, organizing pics this way, feels like a detour to me, no direct access to my pictures.
I know Photographers who work with Bridge CS5 for this very reason. All of the RAW processing included and direct access to the pictures. I want to upgrade to CS5 basically for the content aware fill =). Now i love LR but still, i need reasons why LR offers less “workflowing time” over bridge, especially overall searchability/access. would appreciate any hints, thanks!
Wilf
Dear wilf,
I believe that a single all inclusive catalog is the best solution for most photographers. It is the most efficient way to find any image and its the easiest to backup / maintain. I’ve written a lot about the advantages to a single Adobe Photoshop Lightroom catalog in this post and its comments. Adobe Bridge is a great browser but for me it is not an ideal image management solution. Because it is not a database, like Lightroom, Bridge misses out on powerful features like the Collections and Collection Sets. Searching with Metadata in Bridge is also painfully slow compared to Lightroom.
If performance is your goal consider improving your hardware. Moving your images and your catalog onto a faster external hard drives like my <a href="http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/05/my-photo-storage-system-two-external-hard-drives/" target="_blank"Stripped RAID 0 OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance disk is a great way to speed things up. Adding more ram or moving to a computer with faster processors as your catalog grows is also a good solution. We have a post too on ways to optimize your Lightroom catalog for more speed that might also help. Finally, moving to Lightroom 3 might also give you a bit more performance over the older version.
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David Marx
Dear Kathy,
Adobe Bridge is the right tool for you and it is included with Adobe Photoshop CS5. Bridge is a media browser for all types of files including .png. Lightroom is a digital photography workflow tool and .png is considered outside of that sphere. Learn to use Bridge and you will be very happy!
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David Marx
David–
I just upgraded to CS5 on a PC from PSE8 (don’t get me started on the difficulty getting a clean install, but that’s another story…).
I have 1000′s of .jpeg and .png images in addition to my photos. Since I don’t have Organizer in CS5, not being able to see my .png files in a single catalog is a real pain. I’ve worked a bit with Lightroom 3, but it doesn’t support .png files, so I end up browsing my image folders directly.
Any words of wisdom?
kathy
No need to reply David, I’m answering my own questions via your site. Thanks.
Looks like I will be able to sort my photos and hard drive out. Doesn’t look like too much trouble, but it would have been easier to start fresh.
I think I’ll be able to use Lightroom for organizing and processing for the most part, with Photoshop doing the heavier processing when needed.
Thanks, your site is very informative.
Dear Scott,
Glad you were able to answer your own questions and that you are doing your research. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is not a hard program but there is a learning curve in the initial setup stage. When I teach workshops I try to make it clear to my students that there are really three critical concepts here: the role of the Lightroom catalog, the importance of metadata, and Lightroom’s non-destructive image enhancement system.
Once you grasp these concepts the program makes a lot more sense! Unfortunately, most people leap into the software before they fully understand these three critical background concepts…. You are clearly on the right track and you definitely have the right perspective on the Lightroom + Photoshop CS workflow. Use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to empty your memory cards, to organize your files, for your raw conversion, printing, and simple sharing needs. Use Photoshop for the precision stuff and for creating composited images.
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David Marx
Hi David,
I just purchased CS5 and I was having a hard time getting my head around the differences between Lightroom, Bridge, and Photoshop itself. Thanks to you, I have a better understanding of the differences now. Thanks.
Before I made my purchase of CS5, I moved all my photos to an external hard drive to clear up space on my laptop. (Not tons, as I’m an amateur)Unfortunately, it’s a shared backup drive, not just photos, so I think I’m in over my head there.
I watched the getting started with Lightroom video, and I’m yet another person who didn’t start correctly. Is there a way to clear out Lightroom’s memory if you will, rather than re-installing it? Then maybe I can purchase a designated hard drive for photos only and start over.
I read, when importing from my camera to Lightroom, they are not the original images. Is that true, and if they’re not the original images, where do they go? Seems there is a Lightroom folders under my Pictures files, remember, I set it up wrong from the start. lol
One thing that I don’t like with Lightroom, at least with the files, you can’t preview the thumbnail.
Maybe Lightroom is a little above me and my need for organizing right now.
All the best,
Scott
By the way, I will watch the tutorials, and see if I can get a better handle on things.
Thank you David. I was doing some more research and watched a video on their site that made it look like it’s more the Bridge type than the Organizer type.
I’ll check out your tutorial as well.
Thanks so much for this site – you do a great service here!
I am also considering LR3 – haven’t downloaded the trial yet. My biggest question right now is whether it’s organizing side is more like Bridge or more like the Organizer. I love Bridge and when I had to use a PC version of PS I was terribly disappointed and, more-so, aggravated with the Organizer. It had too many rules and I got completely lost assuming it would act in the same way as the Bridge. I think the main thing was that I wanted to organize my photos into nesting folders (both in PSE and on my hard drive) and when I tried to access the photographs again after doing that it freaked out – told me they weren’t available or something. Then someone explained that I didn’t follow its rules.
I guess what I’m wondering is if the organizing part of LR3 plays nice with the hard drive. If I re-organize files in LR3 will it be reflected in the HD? And, will any other program recognize keywords that are attached to a file?
Can you respond to that? I hope it makes sense. Thank you!
Dear Julie,
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a professional grade image management program. You can store your images using whatever folder structure you like and you can even index more than one hard drive full of images. Check out our video tutorial on using the Import with Add command to see how you could create an index that simply catalogs your existing photo storage folder structure.
Keywords are a form of metadata. Adobe applications store information metadata fields like keywords in a universal format which can be read by most other intelligent digital image enhancement programs. See http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/05/the-mega-important-automatically-write-changes-into-xmp-switch/ and http://thelightroomlab.com/2010/08/searching-with-metadata-in-adobe-photoshop-lightroom/ for more info on why metadata is so useful.
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David Marx
I just upgraded from PSE 8.0 to CS5. I quickly realized that I didn’t have the organizer for my 30,000+ pictures. This evening I downloaded the trial version of LR3. I do shoot all of my pics in RAW. Can you direct me to the best way to get started since I have only used PSE since the 2.0 version? Thanks!
Dear Teran Moon,
Welcome to Lightroom! I suggest watching all of the tutorials, and reading all of the articles, in our Getting Started with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom section before you jump into organizing 30,000 photos. In particular, I would start with this tutorial on Getting Started Right: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Setup and Catalog Creation. Enjoy.
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David Marx
I have tried several time to start using LR but always go back to Bridge+ACR+Photo Mechanic (for browsing and rating at incredible speed, as well as mailing and generating websites and uploading to FTP). Latest test was with LR3.2 and CS5.
That combination is super fast is you have lots of images to take care of in your workflow. Why wait for slow imports, slow user interface, slow brush, superslow browsing of thumbs etc in LR?
David,
What is this Edit > Edit in Photoshop menu? Is that an older than LR3 version feature?
I’m brand new to LR and am very much on the fence about using it because it seems to want to usurp my control over where my photos are and how I access them… I’m against any program that wants that much control because of future considerations such as, 5 years down the road, when millions of photographers are using it will Adobe decide to do something strange on us (combine it with something else, make it overly complex, triple the price of upgrades etc)?
Also, regarding Bridge, and finding files, if you are using a Mac, you can find files very easily in the browser if you have a decent system for naming/numbering.
Economically, if you are an amateur and not making money on your photos, I’d stick with Bridge/Photoshop. If you make money with your photos, or money isn’t an issue, by all means get both, but I say never allow LR to take over your system completely.
Dear Jon,
Thanks for your comments on the Bridge / Photoshop / Lightroom question. I think that your fear of Lightroom “completely taking over your photo storage system” is misguided. Lightroom is an index. You tell Lightroom what files to reference in its database and you tell it where these files live within your hard drives. Not only do you control the index but Lightroom uses a non-destructive metadata-based editing system that is completely non-destructive to your original file!
Where we do agree though is in your recommendation that amateur’s, and those who are not super serious about their photo storage / raw file editing needs, are better of purchasing Photoshop. I would go one further though and suggest that the best product for this audience is the new Photoshop Elements 9 which uses it’s own Organizer Bin instead of the Adobe Bridge. It’s a great multi-media organizer, it’s fairly straight-forward, and it has enough of Photoshop’s image enhancement features
so that you can do some really fun and creative stuff too.
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David Marx
Dear Jon,
Oops. I forgot to mention that the Edit > Edit in Photoshop menu feature is in every version of Lightroom. Select a file and then go up to the edit menu on the top of your screen. Once the menu pops out come down to the Edit In > options and then select the Photoshop option.
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David Marx
Great article, but a simple question (one that after hours of searching, i cannot find). I use and love LR3 I have just purchased PS5 so I have use for that program as well. I understand the two workflows are 1) LR to PS (if needed) then back to LR or BR to ACR and back to BR. Now after having the taste of ACR (now shooting everything in RAW) and also playing with HDR images, I would REALLY like to keep using LR then go to ACR for some fine tuning (I just like how it is laid out-very nice) then return back it it’s home resting spot in LR. I just can’t find anything that says this can be done, much less how to do it??
Thanks for your help
Dear Larry,
I think that you are still a little confused about what Lightroom is and how it operates. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’s develop module is Adobe Camera Raw. They use identical code and offer identical controls just using a different face plate. Personally, I prefer Lightroom’s user interface and I love its speed compared to the Camera Raw module that you enter coming out the Adobe Bridge but in terms of functions they are identical.
For most photographers Lightroom replaces the need for the Adobe Bridge as a doorway into the raw conversion software. Likewise, Lightroom has the ability to send your files directly over to Adobe Photoshop CS5. Check out the options inside of Lightroom under the Edit > Edit in Photoshop menu. Lightroom can make connecting to Photoshop’s panorama or HDR code easy. I don’t mean to knoch the Adobe Bridge, or to say that I never use it, but for most of my needs Lightroom to Photoshop and back is faster and easier.
I hope this helps,
David Marx
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