Viewing images flagged in Lightroom

[FrostyOfTheNorth]

I've flagged a few hundred images in LIghtroom.  Now I want to view those flagged images in Bridge.

How do I do that?  I'm relatively new to Bridge but I have not figured out how to do that.

[Daniel E Lane · Accepted solution]

Bridge and lightroom dont really communicate in that way. Bridge came out first as an interface to work between multiple programs in the Adobe arsenal. It is the "Bridge" between things like Photoshop and InDesign and Illustrator. It's an organizing tool that allows you to move files easily between applications. Then came Lightroom, which is essentially a combination of Adobe Camera Raw and Bridge with souped up organizing file structures. Most people use one or the other. Not really both since they both do a lot of the same things a little differently.

[FrostyOfTheNorth]

I thought Bridge is meant as a powerhouse DAM/media manager/image viewing + more app?

Not being able to view or sort by such a key function (flagging) in such a key app (Lightroom) in the Adobe ecosystem is shocking.

Why in the world wouldn't that be supported??

[melissapiccone]

You can submit a feature request here

Feature Request/Bug Report Form

[FrostyOfTheNorth]

When I click on that link I'm asked to select a product.  When I select bridge I'm redirected to Photoshop Family Customer Community, which doesn't appear to be related to Bridge or a feature request form.

Am I overlooking something? 

[Lumigraphics]

Which program do you want a feature added to? Flags are in the Lightroom database, Bridge doesn't read that. The programs are separate.

This is like asking to read Excel files in Bridge.

[FrostyOfTheNorth]

Here we go.  In another thread we were just talking about the Adobe apologists.  Your response harks back to that.

Which program do you want a feature added to?

That would be up to the developers, but I would seem that's functionality lacking in Bridge.

Flags are in the Lightroom database, Bridge doesn't read that.

Presumably they are also in sidecar files.  Other apps (e.g. Photo Mechanic) read those sidecar files.

This is like asking to read Excel files in Bridge.

Not at all, for numerous reasons.  Excel isn't an Adobe product.  Excel deals with numbers.  Bridge is an Adobe product -- so you'd expect close integration with other Adobe products.  Bridge deals with images and media -- so you'd expect it to work in conjunction with Lightroom.  You can say that black pepper is like the ocean, but uh... it's not.

[Lumigraphics]

Ah yes, conspiracy theories are such fun.

Flags are not written to the XMP sidecar file.

[Beachcolonist]

It is disengenuous to suggest to users here that the Adobe feature request system works. It does not. What you should say is there is a link, but it is generally ignored and a waste of time. At least this is my experience and I am very serious and knowledgable about these things.

Conversely prove me wrong and list the feature requests and success/failure end results as a stat. My point here is that dead-ending people is not ethical, any suggestion that Adobe may respond to a feature request (or bug) should carry a HUGE caveat.

P.S. People become very high thinking they are on to an improvement, they write carefully researched evidence, then wait for some outcome like a dog staring at the door for his master, it's a very mean thing to do to users. I know, I've been there.

[gary_sc]

Hi Beachcolonist,

Please chill.

If there are one million people working with any given application, there are 2 million ways that people want it to work. The whole purpose of UserVoice is for Adobe to get an idea of how many people want/need/wish for any given approach on how something should work. That is coupled with the application's intent and its role in the Adobe ecosphere as well as what's actually possible or reasonable (e.g., if anyone wants Photoshop to run Excel operations, they WILL be disappointed).

In this specific thread, as has been stated, Bridge and LR serve two completely different photographic purposes, they are not supposed to work together. Think of Illustrator and Photoshop. Yes there is a bit of overlap but one cannot do in AI what one can do in PS and vise-versa, and that's good. That's why there are two applications there. While it "seems" that ratings in one will show up in the other, even ratings applied in the Mac's Finder do not show up in either Bridge OR Lightroom and there are some pretty sophisticated programing reasons for that.

All that notwithstanding, even if an idea is brilliant and everyone loves it, if the idea takes enormous amount of programming time, the PTB (powers that be) may may scuttle the idea because that will takes engineering time away from their road map of that application. Yes, they do long term planning.

Your idea may show up in time but it's never the kind of thing that you snap your fingers and your idea will show up in the next release. It just does not work that way.

Lastly, being rude or snarky generally do not help one's cause even if it is a good cause.

[Beachcolonist]

Such malarkey.

[Daniel E Lane]

!

FrostyOfTheNorth  wrote

I thought Bridge is meant as a powerhouse DAM/media manager/image viewing + more app?

It is exactly that. Lightroom is it's own thing. Very stand alone, designed for basic photo editing and cataloging. Bridge is a powerhouse Bridge working with all of the major applications Adobe makes. You can do exactly what you did in Lightroom within Bridge. You can go through and flag and rate all of the photos you want, then go through them in Bridge. What you are asking is akin to doing something in Corel Paint Shop and expecting to be able to see everything you did there in Photoshop, layers and all. The applications are not meant to work together.

[Beachcolonist]

Nothing you say is incorrect, however there is an explanatory back story that relates to the generation of the irritation or confusion or disatisfaction by users that is worth stating. Full disclosure: I use the simple smallest CC subscription and don't even bother to install Lightroom, only Photoshop & Bridge.

In Lightroom, Bridge, and Photoshop Adobe has overlap in function, but never confides to newish users how to best use the three apps, because to do so would raise questions like "why am I paying for something I do not need to use?" & "Why don't you just say Lightroom is crippled compared to Photoshop?" Rather it leaves users wondering & hanging as we see in this thread. The reality is Photoshop is the Big Hammer with big learning curve, but used with Bridge it masters any digital imaging task and is King of Pixel Editors. It, along with OUTSIDE training, is what young people should be using to do art, express themselves, and learn digital imaging. Serious artists and aspiring digital creatives should use Photoshop & Bridge. Lightroom is like Photoshop for Dummies that does not dare to say so. However it is very handy for large sets of images that commonly occur in commerical work and do not require the most extensive editing, such as weddings. It is a compromise software application for making money. Adobe cannot come out and say, "when you chose Lightroom you are making huge compromises in what you ever learn, but who cares it's a wedding," so they just leave the issue foggy and users who advance figure it out themselves.

Adobe is my favorite software company and I'd pay ten years in advance if they let me (I have two paid) but they are also a very limited company re communication candor, that does some things very poorly that it simply should not do at all, like training (does anyone really need the silly built in tips in Photoshop?) and this perhaps this forum/website, which is full of professional double talk and distraction and has so many logins and like-minded pages it boggles the mind and frustrates. I've spent some time here trying to help people and gave up, it's just fake news for Adobe users. People who with to learn should seek out instruction elsewhere.

[kellyh35026525]

Only way I have found so far is to label the files in a colour in Lightroom and once in Bridge, they have a white bar beneath them. Wish there was a quicker way though.

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

if Lightroom’s catalog settings/metadata/automatically write changes to XMP setting exports the flag metadata, it could potentially be leveraged by Bridge or other software using the raw metadata. This is purely conjectured, as I have not tested as I have not reinstalled Lightroom since updating to a new computer.

[Lumigraphics]

Its not. And how would one browse files which have been imported to a catalog?

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

FrostyOfTheNorth  wrote

I've flagged a few hundred images in LIghtroom.  Now I want to view those flagged images in Bridge.

How do I do that?  I'm relatively new to Bridge but I have not figured out how to do that.

It's not possible at this point in time, as flags are not written to XMP. You could select all of the flagged photos in LR and assign them star ratings or a color label, as these are written to XMP.

If they were written to XMP, then enabling the checkbox that @Stephen_A_Marsh showed would work, or Metadata menu > Write Metadata to Files would work. It would work for images only, not videos. Files are never "in" Lightroom's database, so the images themselves can be browsed in Bridge, as you've no doubt found.

You might like to add your vote to this feature request: Lightroom: Save flags in XMP and if that one gets implemented, a matching request for reading that data in Bridge.