Comments on: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom vs. The Adobe Bridge

By: David Marx

David Marx — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 03:04:07 +0000

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.

–
David Marx

By: Paul Smith

Paul Smith — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:03:36 +0000

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.

By: Christian Siebold Photography | Fotograf München + Fotograf Frankfurt

Christian Siebold Photography | Fotograf München + Fotograf Frankfurt — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:22:21 +0000

There is no need to replace Bridge…

By: Christian Siebold Photography | Fotograf München + Fotograf Frankfurt

Christian Siebold Photography | Fotograf München + Fotograf Frankfurt — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:20:44 +0000

For me, PS5 and Bridge in addition to the Canon RAW plugin works perfect. There is absolutely no need for me to purchase Lightroom.

By: David Marx

David Marx — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:29:17 +0000

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

By: Charlie K.

Charlie K. — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:07:40 +0000

David: Is it possible to use Lightroom with files stored on a remote server or in the “cloud”?

By: David Marx

David Marx — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:39:05 +0000

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.

–
David Marx

By: alan

alan — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 04:43:26 +0000

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.

By: Hal

Hal — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 19:09:53 +0000

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?

By: Tanya

Tanya — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:50:47 +0000

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.