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petr66machacek
petr66machacek
Participating Frequently
July 10, 2018
Answered

Camera raw plugin only with Bridge or Lightroom (without Photoshop CS)

  • July 10, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 10232 views

I have a question. I used to use Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw plugin till now. These were the only 2 products I need to work with my photos. After reinstalation of my PC I lost the old licenses and I need to buy some new ones. I would like to ask you is there any possibility of Adobe Bridge modul and Camera Raw plugin combination only without Lightroom or Photoshop CS? Or, alternatively, is it possible to buy only Lighthroom and use the Bridge and Camera Raw plugin this way? I mean will the Camera Raw plugin work with the Lightroom only without Photoshop CS? My idea is to open the photos in Bridge, pick up the snap and by double click open it in Camera Raw plugin. That´s the way I´ve used it till now. Thanks for your reply.

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Correct answer ssprengel

In a word, No, to both your scenarios.

But before continuing, have you checked for your serial numbers on www.adobe.com / login / Manage account / password / Plans and Products (up top) / View your products?

Assuming they're not listed, back to your question:

Bridge and the ACR plug-in are parts of Photoshop (and maybe video processing software, not sure), but not a standalone product, and Lightroom contains the functionality of Bridge and ACR within itself, in that once you've imported photos (told LR where the photos are) LR will show you thumbnails and let you make the same adjustments you can make in ACR.  Of course Importing is a separate precursor step to working on the photos, unlike Bridge that opens on a Window Explorer or Mac Finder folder of images without importing.

Depending on what you do in Bridge/ACR perhaps Elements would be ok for you, but it's limited to the first three tabs in ACR:  Basic Toning, Detail (Sharpening, Noise-reduction) and Camera Calibration (Process Version and Camera Profile).

The cheapest way to get the current version of LR+PS is a $120/yr subscription billed at $10/month.  If you cancel, early you owe half the remaining balance as penalty:

Compare plans | Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan

You can subscribe to PS by itself for $20/mo.  Adobe assumes PS-only people are highly paid graphic artists working for some company who can afford to pay for software for it's employees, whereas LR+PS people are barely-getting-by photographers working for themselves, who need a break.

1 reply

ssprengel
ssprengelCorrect answer
Inspiring
July 11, 2018

In a word, No, to both your scenarios.

But before continuing, have you checked for your serial numbers on www.adobe.com / login / Manage account / password / Plans and Products (up top) / View your products?

Assuming they're not listed, back to your question:

Bridge and the ACR plug-in are parts of Photoshop (and maybe video processing software, not sure), but not a standalone product, and Lightroom contains the functionality of Bridge and ACR within itself, in that once you've imported photos (told LR where the photos are) LR will show you thumbnails and let you make the same adjustments you can make in ACR.  Of course Importing is a separate precursor step to working on the photos, unlike Bridge that opens on a Window Explorer or Mac Finder folder of images without importing.

Depending on what you do in Bridge/ACR perhaps Elements would be ok for you, but it's limited to the first three tabs in ACR:  Basic Toning, Detail (Sharpening, Noise-reduction) and Camera Calibration (Process Version and Camera Profile).

The cheapest way to get the current version of LR+PS is a $120/yr subscription billed at $10/month.  If you cancel, early you owe half the remaining balance as penalty:

Compare plans | Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan

You can subscribe to PS by itself for $20/mo.  Adobe assumes PS-only people are highly paid graphic artists working for some company who can afford to pay for software for it's employees, whereas LR+PS people are barely-getting-by photographers working for themselves, who need a break.

    deejjjaaaa
    deejjjaaaa
    Inspiring
    July 12, 2018

    > Bridge and the ACR plug-in are parts of Photoshop (and maybe video processing software, not sure), but not a standalone product

    not true... Bridge and ACR are standalone products and technically you can use ACR with only Bridge installed :-)

    the mere fact that ACR code includes checks that either Bridge or PS are present (and that creates some impression that it is not a genuine standalone product) does not mean that PS has to be installed... if you don't believe me - temporarily rename your PS folders and you will see that Bridge starts ACR just fine... be a little more enterprising, eh ?

    R
    Richard Southworth
    Inspiring
    July 13, 2018

    >  It may well require other PS binaries to do real work..

    it does not - as I noted you can delete PS and ACR will work fully including saving JPG/TIFF/DNG files... I digged into my old notes and it is a matter to run ACR once with PS to get it "activated" for Bridge (at least it used to be), then ACR + Bridge will live happily ever after w/o PS... no PS binaries are necessary for ACR to work (do not click "OPEN" button - save instead)


    In the interests of science I performed a (reasonably) careful experiment on my spare pc, which had only Bridge.

    1. Upgraded Bridge and Camera Raw on the spare pc to bring up to current level.  Tried to invoke CR, got the usual msg about not having started a qualifying product.

    2. Loaded up Photoshop CC on spare pc.  Without invoking PS tried Bridge/CR again, no go.

    3. Fired up Photoshop, since I was already running it on my desktop and laptop it said no unless I shut down one of the other licenses.  I got out and tried Bridge/CR again, still no go.

    4. Transferred my laptop license to the spare pc version of PS, now Bridge/CR works on the spare pc.  Bridge/CR no longer operates on the laptop.

    5. Switched license back to laptop, PS disabled on spare pc, and Bridge/CR no longer works (same old message about qualifying product).  Thankfully now fully operational on laptop.

    So what can we conclude?  Not too much, other than Adobe has "tightened" up the process, i.e. just signing out on a system kills Bridge/CR functionality.  And can't really conclude much about where binaries are located.  Again, this was all done using latest version of CC.

    Richard Southworth

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