Participant

Question

Lightroom vs. Bridge?

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
July 15, 2012
11 replies
97778 views

For just storing and tagging photos, is there any real advantage to using Lightroom over Bridge?

Thanks.

This topic has been closed for replies.

cmgap

Community Expert

Bridge will show all file types for a given project and is therefore useful and powerful for a variety of scenarios. Teachers and people that do a lot of live demos often use Bridge to organize their files into project folders that contain everything they need. It's efficient and its use goes well beyond the Ps compositing or editing workflow.

Lightroom is a Digital Asset Management application specific to viewing, tagging, sorting, editing thousands of your image files. Editing in Ps from Lr is a solid workflow because it allows Lr to keep track of your Ps edits.

Over time folks who are focused on managing their images are well served to work within Lr and those who are managing multiple file types for projects (for demos as an example) still use Bridge.

If you have moved away from using Bridge because it suits your purposes that's great. Many others still find Bridge effective in their workflow and would miss it if it weren't available.

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robgendreau

Inspiring

Bridge is also used extensively in group environments. Lr is very much an individual application; it's even tough for one person to use it on two machines. You might use it to search a bank of stock media for example in a publishing house, where there's no way you wanna import that stuff since you may never need it again.

And Bridge does create collections (I noticed I mistakenly said it didn't in an earlier post...brain fade since I use them, doh). And if you use metadata extensively, it can be just as easy to find stuff in Bridge as Lr. Sometimes easier, and it has views that Lr doesn't, like a table. So for some work, it's sometimes nicer to use Bridge even if you do use Lr a lot. For example, if you wanna browse say a friend's SD card or camera for just a few images to copy it's way way faster than trying to do that in Lr.

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mark@headTrix

Community Expert

There is some big confusion here.... seems a few people answered the question, but many ignored their responses.

BRIDGE is just that.... its a BRIDGE where you can search your files and right click the PDF and open it in Acrobat, or right-click the PSD to open it in Photoshop. Its a helpful navigator to view After Effects Presets, your video files, a better way to make sure you OPEN the correct image since it allows you to clearly read all the metadata, see the resolution, to zoom in and compare images and to rate them with stars... so it's easy to FIND and OPEN the correct images, etc.

Lightroom is a Photo Catalogue of all your PHOTOS & VIDEOS (best for photos) ... it allows you to easily import and batch process, tag images with keywords to easily find them. Let say you went traveling to Belize and Cuba last year (I went in December) and you imported all your photos, you tagged the Belize Photos with keywords like "Travel, Belize" and you tagged the Cuba Photos with keywords "Travel, Cuba", and you also have some photos of our dog with keywords "dog, Chelsea". First you would sort through your images, you can quickly mark them with a FLAG ( I like it) or REJECT(its no good). Once I reject 10 photos or so, I can Delete Rejected Photos, and it deletes them from my catalogue AND my actual computer or drive where the photos are. Then I can go thru the photos and rate them, Ill rate my favorites with 5 stars. Then my friends come over and I want to show my travel photos... I can do a search for "Travel" which will then show ALL my travel photos even though they are in various folders (I don't think Bridge does that), then I can click the FLAG to show all of the Photos from Travel that I liked, or I can just click the 5 stars to show them my best Travel photos.

I can also make a Collection which is like a saved search where I can just click the collection and it shows my favorite photos. I can even make a Smart Collection, so that any photo I ever rate with a 5 start AUTOMATICALLY can go into my Smart Collection. I click the folder and BOOM, I can show you my best photos! Then I can do search for "Chelsea" and see all of my dog photos. Or I can clear the keywords and press 5 star ONLY see the best photos from my entire catalogue, from travel, and of my dog, Chelsea.

oh... that's not all folks! Then I can go into the Develop module and go into the Darkroom so to speak (hence why they named it Lightroom!) to touch up your photos, increase saturation, sharpen, touch-up, remove parts of the image (like a telephone pole in the way) color correct, sharpen, AND you can output to a Photo Book, Web Portfolio, Print Package, or create a Video with audio and transitions.. all pretty Quickly!

cheers!

mark

headTrix, Inc. | Adobe Certified Training & Consulting

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sxrxrr

Participant

Many years ago I used Bridge and CR + PS for my photography. Then I moved exclusively to LR, unless I needed to do a composite, which I did in PS. Now I am reconsidering PS for the ability to do more complex selective adjustment layers. For example, selective curves, which LR cannot do. Also, PS now has some useful photography filters with liquify and all the focus/blur filters. But, Bridge seems a poor alternative to LR for cataloguing. I make extensive use of Collections in LR.

I recently attended a photo workshop in Cuba. Very nice... Nearly all the participants were professional or very experienced non-pros. They all used Bridge and PS. However, none were knowledgable of LR too and couldn't tell me why. In fact, many said LR reduces all images to 8-bit not 16. Not true. Some also thought LR was destructive and PS isn't. Not true.

So, like many, I am perplexed by Adobe's product mix with CC.

What are your thoughts?

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sxrxrr

Participant

The other big difference I see is my DNG files are around 25 meg. Of course, LR doesn't change that. After a few simple edits in PS the saved PSD files are 143 meg. Damn! I did a test doing the same several things in LR and in PS CR, then saving as a PSD file. Again, 143 meg versus my normal 25 meg. Same edits since it's CR and LR.

I don't like that...

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DattaG

Participant

In my experience, Lightroom is FAR faster, especially on a powerful computer.

But its "buts" are huge. It doesn't have the move function that Bridge has - that would save SO much time. Worse, if you drag and drop (the only way to move files in LR as far as I can tell), and there are files of the same name there, LR will not ask you to skip, replace, or auto-rename. It will just not do it. The only way around that as far as I can tell is to go back and re-name the files manually (or batch rename them, adding a sequential number for each), then drag and drop them again. WTF? Especially since that technology already is owned by Adobe and is present and in place in Bridge.

You'd think they'd put the best of both together (and it would be in LR, which has so much more going for it). Maybe that's coming in CC 2022

HBrunner

Participant

I know this is an old thread and I am trying both Lightroom and Bridge. I picked up Lightroom before I got into the PS/LR CC scrip fees as I could not afford PS CS6 at the time. Lightroom could do everything I needed for the most part when it came to photo editing, so no need to buy PS. When I started a photo class at my local community collage, they used Bridge as it was the industry standard for photo/media cataloging. After that it was up to ACR/PS to do the rest of the work. With this said is Bridge still the industry standard for cataloging? As of now I believe the LR uses ACR engine and I am wondering how to batch process in LR for lens correction profiles, like in ACR filmstrip view for batch processing? I guess it comes down to, use what works for you to get the job done.

dj_paige

Legend

With this said is Bridge still the industry standard for cataloging?

I doubt that anyone has quantified this, and I suspect the answer is "No" (although I admit to not having data) but I also wonder why it matters — if some piece of software meets your needs, then that piece of software is what you should use.

As of now I believe the LR uses ACR engine and I am wondering how to batch process in LR for lens correction profiles

You can apply a Develop preset when you import the photos, so every photo imported in that batch will have the desired lens correction. Alternatively after import you can turn on lens correction for all photos selected using Auto Sync

brennanw50166403

Participant

I shoot hundreds of thousands of photos a years for several clients. Lightroom is overcomplicated software. You can spend hundreds of hours learning LR and not shooting if that is your goal.

K

Kim Letkeman

Participating Frequently

Lol ... that is a bit of a nonsense assertion. LR takes a few dozen hours to get comfortable, but the basics are there within the first day. Photoshop and Bridge on the other hand can take a very long time to achieve competence.

Note: I like both equally. But many of us use LR for most of the work and Photoshop when we need to do extensive retouching.

Tomato, tomahto ..

brennanw50166403

Participant

Can you view images in LR without importing them? NO! Takes the the efficiency and time saving straight into 500 extra steps to do anything. Don't forget the cataloging!

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azvlr

Participating Frequently

As an absolute beginner, I am trying to decide which of these programs to invest my time into learning. Most of the responses above are very technical, at least to me, so aren't all the helpful. It seems that Lightroom and Bridge have features that overlap. Bridge and Photoshop have features that overlap, and Lightroom and Photoshop also have overlapping features.

Why did Adobe do this? Why do I have the capability to edit photos in Lightroom? I thought that is what Photoshop is for. I was quite disappointed when I started some training videos on Photoshop, and the first hour and fifteen minutes of the training is about Bridge. I would appreciate some advice. Thanks. (I was not able to view the videos at work).

dj_paige

Legend

Why did Adobe do this?

To give us choices. To provide features not in Photoshop or Bridge.

Why do I have the capability to edit photos in Lightroom?

Why not?

I thought that is what Photoshop is for.

There are several levels of complexity of photo editing, if you don't need ALL of the extreme power of Photoshop, maybe something else (Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, Bridge/ACR) will suffice

I would appreciate some advice.

Well, I don't have any advice at this time because you need to specify some detail about what you are looking for in a photographic application. If you can tell us, in a reasonable amount of detail, what you would like to do with your photos, how you would like to organize them, what types of edits you might want to do, what the end usage of your photos would be (professional display, sharing with friends and relatives, entering contests, etc.), we might be able to give better advice.

But ... I really think this is a time when the advice of a stranger across the internet is pretty irrelevant. All of these programs offer 30-day free trials. You need to give the programs a try and decide which one you like better. Note: that's which one YOU like better, not the one that some stranger across the internet likes better.

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robgendreau

Inspiring

I often wished LR had features that Bridge has; the XMP template and metadata stuff for instance. And even when I'm browsing through photos it would be nice to sometimes see PDFs in LR, or at least have the option. Or the list view you get from Bridge. Or in Bridge being able to go straight into a PS plugin (I'm using CS6 BTW). I realize Bridge came about sorta (entirely?) as a means of facilitating suite-ness among the Adobe applications, but I think it would be a terrific standalone Finder substitute, at least on the Mac platform. I hate that I'll probably have to get the full CC subscription to get it in the future.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

The advantages of one over the other do depend on how you want to do your tagging and your personal preferences about how you work the fastest.

Some points in favor of Lightroom are the extensive keywording options that it has over Bridge. In Bridge, tagging is mostly about typing and clicking check boxes. This is fine if your volume is low, but as you need to tag more images the limits of Bridge start to get tedious and slow, especially the lack of keyboard shortcuts for keywording as far as I know.

Lightroom gives you more flexibility, especially if you like to use the keyboard instead of the mouse. Lightroom doesn't just have a keyword list and a place for you to type them in. It also lists Recent Keywords and provides keyboard shortcuts for them, it has the Metadata Painter (so you can tag by clicking images) and its keyboard shortcut, drag-and-drop keywording, Keyword Suggestions, Keyword Sets, and other ways that are totally missing in Bridge. I think you can keyword large numbers of images a lot faster in Lightroom, especially when various images need different combinations of keywords. Also, if location metadata is important, Bridge isn't of much help, while the Map module in Lightroom does help tag and find images by location.

While Bridge uses the Camera Raw database (I think it might be the Camera Raw cache, actually, which is potentially less permanent than the Lightroom database) it isn't at the same level as the Lightroom database. For example, you can't use Bridge to store any information about images on offline volumes, while the Lightroom database can remember metadata, previews and paths to offline images.

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MWildcard

Participant

Conrad Chavez wrote:
Some points in favor of Lightroom are the extensive keywording options that it has over Bridge. In Bridge, tagging is mostly about typing and clicking check boxes. This is fine if your volume is low, but as you need to tag more images the limits of Bridge start to get tedious and slow, especially the lack of keyboard shortcuts for keywording as far as I know.

While I have never had or used Lightroom, I have a few things to contribute. One, on keyboard shortcuts: It is true (I was very surprised) that there is no way within Bridge to set keyboard shortcuts to assign keywords. However, I did find a workaround for this. It's a bit clumsy to set up, but still MUCH faster than clicking the checkboxes for each individual image you want to tag.

Method 1 (not a true "workaround"): Use review mode (Cmd+B) to select a bunch of photos you want to tag and to drop out those you don't want to tag. Then just tag them all at once.

Method 2 (actual workaround) for Mac only: Download and install BetterTouchTool from here: http://blog.boastr.net/ (which you should have installed anyways; it's a terrific app.) Add Bridge to the applications section. You can then add custom keyboard shortcuts (or even trackpad gestures) to activate any menu item in Bridge. (Already useful, even without keyword setup as I'm about to describe.)

To set a keyboard shortcut to assign a specific keyword or set of keywords, you go in Bridge to Tools->Create Metadata Template and make a template with just the keywords you want. Assign it a descriptive name. Now, adding those keywords can be done in Bridge through a menu item (Tools->Append Metadata->[name of template]) and therefore that action can be assigned a keyboard shortcut or a trackpad gesture using BetterTouchTool. (In BetterTouchTool, select Application->Adobe Bridge. Then under the "keyboard" tab, select "add new shortcut," then under "Trigger predefined action" select "Trigger menu-bar menu item" and type "Tools;Append Metadata;[enter name of your template here]". And of course set what keyboard shortcut you want to use to activate that action.)

Admittedly slightly cumbersome to set up, but really it's only a couple minutes and then you're done. I only bother doing it for keywords that I use very frequently, such as names of close members of my family. (BetterTouchTool also allows you to deactivate the keyboard shortcuts without deleting them, which can be handy so you don't use them accidentally.) But it works perfectly and I now do 90% of my keyword tagging through keyboard shortcuts in Bridge, using BetterTouchTool.

Another point that hasn't been brought up: I wonder, does Lightroom add its keywords to the actual metadata of the image files you are tagging? Or does it just store the keyword data in its database like iPhoto? I recently found out that iPhoto does NOT add keywords to the actual metadata of the file, so if you ever move away from iPhoto any work you have done in tagging your photos will be wasted. Bridge DOES change the metadata of the actual image files, besides keeping a database/cache.

Todd Shaner

Legend

I use both LR and Bridge for project asset management. LR has keywording benefits, but can't import many file formats such as PDF, AI, INDD, etc. Neither can LR read, write, or filter the metadata of these other file formats to organize, search, and find ALL project file types. LR is also limited as to the metadata fields it can display in the Grid and Loupe views.

MWildcard wrote:
Another point that hasn't been brought up: I wonder, does Lightroom add its keywords to the actual metadata of the image files you are tagging? Or does it just store the keyword data in its database like iPhoto? I recently found out that iPhoto does NOT add keywords to the actual metadata of the file, so if you ever move away from iPhoto any work you have done in tagging your photos will be wasted. Bridge DOES change the metadata of the actual image files, besides keeping a database/cache.

Lightrom has the ability to write keywords to the file or raw XMP sidecar using CTRL+S keys in the Libray module view. You can also change the Catalog Settings to 'Automatically Write changes Into XMP,' which will also write metadata to JPEG and TIF files.

It would be great if Adobe would offer a CC version of LR that is better integrated with all of the other "suite" applications. I do almost all of my InDesign layout image rendering with LR, including scanner images, but LR lacks certain basic capabilities. I have posted a LR Feature Request that address some of these limitations, including ability to display key metadata fields. This allows properly resizing images for an InDesign layout or Web application, and viewing and filtering on key metadata fields from inside LR.

Please review this feature request, add your comments there, and a +1 vote if you feel the changes would be beneficial.

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/gw73zjy55amnv

Thank You,

Todd

areohbee

Legend

web.boards wrote:
For just storing and tagging photos, is there any real advantage to using Lightroom over Bridge?

Yes. Lightroom is faster and more capable. Lightroom uses an image database, Bridge just "wings it" without the database.

Ian Lyons

Community Expert

Rob Cole wrote:
Yes. Lightroom is faster and more capable. Lightroom uses an image database, Bridge just "wings it" without the database.

Actually, Bridge does use a database. In 'some' respects, Bridge is better and faster than Lr for some users. For example, it can use the embedded previews, thus making it way faster than Lr. Also, unlike Lr, the UI is very flexible in so far as panels can be moved around. Also, unlike Lr, metadata can be 'appended' or 'replaced', which a pretty major benefit to those who make extensive use of metadata. So far as editing images go, ACR is faster than Lr at pretty much everything. Bridge has a powerful, scripting language, which is more than can be said for Lr. Also, 'Bridge Talk' (the code underlying Bridge's ability to communicate with other Creative Suite applications is used by Lr when sending images to Photoshop.

The external folk who drove Lr in the direction it eventually went were the same folk who drove Bridge. This was long before many of the current pre release testers (Lr and Bridge) even knew Lr existed.

areohbee

Legend

Ian Lyons wrote:
Actually, Bridge does use a database.

I stand corrected - my apology for disseminating misinformation. (I thought one of the advantages of Lightroom (over Bridge) was the database, and consequent speed for lib filtering and what have you). I know a lot more about Lightroom than Bridge.

Ian Lyons wrote:
...it can use the embedded previews, thus making it way faster than Lr.

Only faster if the Lr lib previews are not available yet, but unfortunately since editing an image invalidates the lib preview, this happens far too often... Seems like another Lr area that is ripe for improvement.

Ian Lyons wrote:
Also, unlike Lr, the UI is very flexible in so far as panels can be moved around.

I'm sure some people really appreciate this.

Ian Lyons wrote:
Also, unlike Lr, metadata can be 'appended' or 'replaced', which a pretty major benefit to those who make extensive use of metadata.

This seems like a glaring omission in Lightroom.

Ian Lyons wrote:
So far as editing images go, ACR is faster than Lr at pretty much everything.

Sounds like I should be using Bridge instead of Lightroom (and Adobe should be reconsidering Lr software design ).

Ian Lyons wrote:
Bridge has a powerful, scripting language, which is more than can be said for Lr.

Out of curiosity: Any reason why there are so few scripts for Bridge? It was one of the things that drove me to Lightroom - If I remember correctly, Bridge uses javascript, whereas Lightroom uses Lua (which I much prefer), but there are tons of plugins written for Lightroom, yet relatively few scripts written for Bridge. Or, is there some well-populated repository of Bridge scripts that I am not aware of? (definitely *not* "The Exchange"). I don't remember details, but my conclusion after comparing the scripting environment of Bridge to that of Lightroom was that Lightroom's scripting environment is far superior to Bridge.

Ian - the tone of your reply seems to suggest you are "not so enamored by Lightroom". Do you primarily use Bridge, or Lightroom?

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