2 Correct answers
Bridge is a viewer: it can let you see your images, compare your images, and let you see your images with all of your ACR adjustments and do adjustment via PS and sizing in batches. It can more easily see your metadata, etc.
Lightroom Classic is ACR with a database. It can do all that Bridge can do and much more. It can significantly do more with keywords, global changes to images, much easier organization of images, it goes on and on. What feature(s) are important to you so that I do not hav
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gary_sc is pretty much right. Although most of the raw and metadata batch editing I want to do is possible with Camera Raw and Bridge, in Lightroom Classic the same tasks are faster and more efficient once you learn the tools. There are more options, more keyboard shortcuts for those options, better support for multiple displays, etc.
In Lightroom Classic it’s all in one application from import to print. In contrast, the workflow with Bridge requires four separate applications to achieve the s
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In Lightroom Classic it’s all in one application from import to print. In contrast, the workflow with Bridge requires four separate applications to achieve the same workflow: Adobe Photo Downloader for direct import from camera/card to Bridge, Adobe Bridge for organization and metadata, Camera Raw for raw editing, and Adobe Photoshop for printing.
By @Conrad_C
Not entirely true.
1. Adobe photo downloader is not necessary. You can download the pictures to your computer any which way, Bridge will still be able to show all the downloaded pictures, heck, it can show pictures that are not only downloaded to your computer, but also pictures on a thumb drive without any need for import into a certain database.
2. Camera Raw acts like a native engine within Bridge. Actually Camera Raw engine is not different from Lightroom's editing engine. Anyway, when editing anything within Bridge, it does not have to open or launch a separate application. It can be as seamless as editing a picture within Lightroom.
There are differences between Bridge and Lightroom, but I would not consider "4 applications" vs "1 application" as a difference between them.
This comparison is between Lightroom Classic and Bridge, so if you choose to leave out Photo Downloader and Camera Raw, then you don’t have a complete comparison, because Bridge needs those components to be comparable to the end-to-end workflow in Lightroom Classic.
1. Adobe photo downloader is not necessary. You can download the pictures to your computer any which way, Bridge will still be able to show all the downloaded pictures, heck, it can show pictures that are not only downloaded to your computer, but also pictures on a thumb drive without any need for import into a certain database.
By @ravik64622065
In Lightroom Classic many people (including myself) use Import to pre-process images with features such as applying a metadata template, automatic organization into date-based folders, automatic template-based file renaming, and import presets. This automated ingestion saves a lot of time and work.
In Bridge those functions are available only inside Photo Downloader, so if you don’t include that, then when comparing end-to-end workflows, Bridge no longer has feature parity with the Import dialog box in Lightroom. Without Photo Downloader, Bridge cannot automate the first ingestion step in an end-to-end workflow; all Bridge can do then is show a folder of photos from a camera.
2. Camera Raw acts like a native engine within Bridge. Actually Camera Raw engine is not different from Lightroom's editing engine. Anyway, when editing anything within Bridge, it does not have to open or launch a separate application. It can be as seamless as editing a picture within Lightroom.
By @ravik64622065
Yes, Camera Raw can launch from Bridge so you can say it’s “within” it in a way. But it is not as well integrated as in the Develop module in Lightroom Classic, and this creates a number of problems. The big problem with Camera Raw is that it’s a modal dialog box. By requiring that Camera Raw be opened into its own modal window, this restricts what it can do, and it also restricts what you can do in Bridge while Camera Raw is open.
For example, in Lightroom Classic, it is no problem to freely switch between raw edits, metadata edits, and other tasks such as printing and slide shows, because they are all integrated modules in the same application. And Lightroom Classic remembers the History for each image.
But in Bridge, almost no Bridge features can be used while you are in Camera Raw, because the separate Camera Raw window blocks almost all access to the rest of Bridge. (Because it’s really a separate application. The Camera Raw plug-in code isn’t even stored in the same folder as the Bridge application.)
In Bridge, if you are editing 82 images in Camera Raw and decide you’d like to add a keyword to one of them before continuing on with raw edits, you cannot do that without exiting Camera Raw (losing your undo stack because ACR has no History), adding the keyword, opening Camera Raw again, re-selecting the one image out of the 82 you were working on (because Camera Raw always opens up to the first of the selected images), and setting up whatever you were doing again. Certainly not as seamless as in Lightroom Classic, where tighter integration makes the same operation simpler and faster with fewer steps.
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