Lightroom Classic v. Lightroom CC v. Bridge

Question

Help. Going a bit bananas. I am diving back into my old photography hobby more seriously and need help selecting the best Adobe program to use.

Last week, I used Lightroom CC to import >60,000 images into a consolidated directory. I chose to copy each original into a new location (networked drive) and, in so doing, de-duped many thousands of images. Images previsouly spread across iCloud, Google Photos, DropBox etc are now consolidated into this single Lightroom originals folder. This equates to ~400GB. There is another ~700GB of video to be imported, although this may contain significant duplication.

Next comes the digitization of 10 years worth of slides and negatives (which, of course, has zero meta-data). Before I embark on that endeavor, I want to have my photography collection management strategy dialed in.

Lightroom CC is steadily working to cloud sync. Process is very slow, but steady. Additionally, my network drive is backed-up to cloud (Backblaze), so I feel this collection is well backed up.

Performance of Lr CC is very slow. I suspect this is due to (a) storing images on a network drive and (b) using a business laptop that is not really optimized for graphic or media work. I am currently looking at a new Dell Precision laptop with 1TB SSD, 32GB RAM, 4GB VRAM, etc. So, I should be able to relocate most images to an internal SSD soon, which will surely help performance.

Still with me? (Thanks)

Is Lr CC the best app for me?

In my very brief experience with it so far, I'm surprised at the limited functionality for batch changing file names or meta-data at import. Personally, I am not wild about the originals being buried in some cryptic folder structure. I appreciate the ability to simply use my operating system's (Windows 10) file browser to explore folders of my original images. this is something that I could get over.

I used desktop Lr and Bridge long ago and seem to recall more functionality.

My application:

I do not need a lot of editing functionality. (If I really need to edit, I can use Photoshop.) My main concern is organization and management of my photos. I want the ability to find an image quickly. Searching by date, location, or other metadata. To really get there, I will need to edit (and add) a ton of metadata. I want to continuously "enrich" the metadata of my photos with comments, tags, locations, ratings, etc that make the entire collection more navigable. In a perfect world, I could use a program that would edit this meta-data at the image file level. (Not by creating some separate database/library file that can be corrupted or thrown out of sync if the original files are moved around.)

What is the best program to use? Lightroom cc? Lightroom desktop? Bridge? Bridge cc?

Connected question: can Lightroom and bridge be used together to work with the same underlying directory of images? Or, will changes from one program screw-up the library and database from the other?

I have read extensively about each of these programs and watched a number of online videos, including the wonderful ones by Terry White. Still, I do not feel that I have the answer.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Bart

dj_paige · Answer

So if your main concern is organization and management of photos, I would go with either Lightroom Classic or Bridge (and I prefer Lightroom Classic over Bridge by a wide margin, but maybe you're different). So when you say you want to be able to find a photo quickly, I think Lightroom Classic is the best choice, it is a database which allows you to organize and search quickly, but (in my opinion) you need to use it properly, and this means organizing and searching using keywords and other metadata; and not organizing and searching by folder name and file name.

Now, Adobe has confused us all with their constantly changing and confusing naming schemes, but I think you are referring to Lightroom (yes, that's the official name) when you say Lightroom CC; and this does have some organizing and management tools, but it was designed to store your photos in the Cloud, and all organization and management would occur in the Cloud. Is that what you want? It didn't sound like it to me. I view the cloud-based Lightroom more as a sharing application, allowing you (and others, if desired) to access your photos from anywhere via any capable device (cell phone, tablet, personal computer).

Connected question: can Lightroom and bridge be used together to work with the same underlying directory of images? Or, will changes from one program screw-up the library and database from the other?

Use one or the other. Don't use both. You will regret it.

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