Exit
  • Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
    Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
  • 한국 커뮤니티
    Dedicated community for Korean speakers
3

Why use Bridge?

Participant ,
Dec 22, 2017 Dec 22, 2017

I've been using most of the Adobe products for years -- especially Lightroom and Photoshop.  However, I've never quite understood the purpose of Bridge.  Lightroom (slowly) manages most of my digital assets such as photos and videos, so why would I need Bridge?

If I have content in Bridge, I would surely want to use them first in Lighrtoom anytime I ever wanted to do anything with them, so I'd have to open Bridge, move them to Lightroom and them edit them there or move them yet again into Photoshop ------ so why Bridge?

I'm sure there's something fundamental that I'm not understanding about Bridge in regards to a healthy work flow.  Could anyone help me understand why I would ever want to use Bridge and how I might best include it in a workflow?

Thanks!!

TOPICS
How to
12.5K
Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines

correct answers 1 Correct answer

LEGEND , Dec 22, 2017 Dec 22, 2017

In a nutshell Lightroom is for photographers and Bridge is for graphic designers and artists.

Lightroom only manages the files you import. Bridge is a browser and sees all files on a computer. Creative Cloud customers using applications like Illustrator, InDesign, and Dreamweaver will often use Bridge for their file management and workflow.

Translate
LEGEND ,
Dec 22, 2017 Dec 22, 2017

In a nutshell Lightroom is for photographers and Bridge is for graphic designers and artists.

Lightroom only manages the files you import. Bridge is a browser and sees all files on a computer. Creative Cloud customers using applications like Illustrator, InDesign, and Dreamweaver will often use Bridge for their file management and workflow.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Participant ,
Dec 22, 2017 Dec 22, 2017

Thanks!  I can appreciate that.  I guess I didn't consider use outside a photography framework.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Mar 16, 2018 Mar 16, 2018

I don't agree at all with the idea that Lightroom is for photographers and Bridge isn't. I'm a working pro who does product photography and Bridge is the better product for that. I also shoot landscapes and models and Lightroom works better for that work.

Bridge has tighter integration with Photoshop and easier extensibility via scripting than Lightroom. For a workflow using multiple computers and network storage, Bridge is far superior to Lightroom.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Aug 02, 2019 Aug 02, 2019
LATEST

I've found 3 very helpful uses for Bridge in terms of Motion Graphic Design and Video Editing. I'll admit, Bridge has been more of a nuisance than a help for most of my career. Can't tell you how many times I've been in a hurry and accidentally selected it to open a file, only to have to quit out of it. That said, one thing I've known it to be useful for is...

Adding Metadata

I personally haven't found myself having to do this much in my career. But it's worth mention that at one studio I was with for awhile, our department head had an idea to have someone plug all sorts of metadata into the stock images/videos and custom elements we had built up over the years, that were lying in our communal assets library. We had so much useful, re-usable content in there that it was difficult to navigate, so we just ended up making/buying more and the problem increased. His thought was to have someone add metadata using Bridge, so that we could search keywords that described the content we were seeking... such as "cityscape" or "bokehs", etc. and let Bridge weed through all of our content. The problem was, nobody ever really had much time to work on it and I moved on from that company before seeing that project come to fruition. I still like the idea though.

Batch Renaming Image Sequences

I recently stumbled up on this. I know it's been around for years but I used to use Fireworks to batch rename image sequences. I was having trouble opening a very lengthy sequence recently and wondered if there was a better app out there. After a quick google, I found that Bridge can perform this task. Now I haven't noticed it being any quicker or slower than Fireworks in this regard, but after poking around a bit and finding one more very useful task, it was enough for me to uninstall FW and free up a little space.

Spacebar previews - particularly AVIs on a Mac

Now for me, this is the big one. And honestly, I can't believe no one ever told me about it, after doing this for over a decade. Now I work on an old Mac Pro that I have modified over the years to stay relevant in today's climate, but I've designed on PCs a lot too. Probably the biggest complaint I know of that comes from any video pro (myself included) that has worked on a Mac, is Windows Explorer's inability to do spacebar previews of video files. Bridge allows one to do this, thus allowing those who have installed 3rd party apps for this vary task, to delete said apps. More importantly, for those few of us who still work on a Mac, the biggest complaint here is our inability to preview AVI files. Bridge also allows you to do that! This is huge for me since I design a lot of in-game content for pro sports teams. Whenever I hav eto create content for the ribbon LED boards that are on the fascia of the upper decks at the arenas/stadiums, they almost always require AVI and I need to transcode the MOVs I export from AE or ME by logging into my company's remote PC. This makes it difficult to QC videos due to the compression of a remote log-in. Also, often times Media Encoder can be confusing and lead to bad transcodes that have an added a letterbox or have changed the aspect ratio, etc. This allows me to QC those transcoded AVIs locally, once they have synced back up on my end (using Dropbox). This is huge for me. Anyway, thanks for reading my lengthy response. Hopefully helps someone

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Mar 15, 2018 Mar 15, 2018

That is a great explanation. 

It makes more sense to think of it as a browser for visual artists.

I am a visual artist who has been using Illustrator and Photoshop since they were invented.

Over the years I have created a very streamline, and intuitive understanding of managing image files in Windows.

There have been many types of software (they often come with cameras) that provide image downloading/file management functions.

All of these including Bridge, seem to be another "layer" over the basic Windows Explorer filing system. 

All of these including Bridge, seem to be another "lens" through which we can see the basic Windows Explorer filing system.

Exploring all the functions of Bridge and these other file management tools, I don't find much that can't be done with the existing Windows Explorer filing system.

This being the case, why would we add an extra layer of software/complexity over another software which does the same thing?

By doing this, we are just asking for more problems.  Add more software and you are going to add more problems, that's just a fact.

If the added software doesn't really add much functionality, then why would we introduce more trouble to our lives?

-Michael

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Mar 16, 2018 Mar 16, 2018

Hi Michael, I think it is because Bride integrates seamlessly with other Adobe apps and shares the camera raw plug-in. Metadata entered in Bridge can be read in other Adobe apps and its simple to export, batch export, enter keywords in bulk, create a contact sheet etc. Documents will open automatically in Photoshop with a simple double-click from Bridge whereas in Windows it would be necessary to right-click and choose “Open With" and then browse to choose the appropriate application.  For me certain file types are not recognized by Windows but I can always see a thumbnail in Bridge. So it could be seen as an extra layer but a very useful one.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines