I’m a fan of yours and I’m a long-time user and fan of Lightroom Classic. My entire photo library is imported into LR Classic, however, it gets very complicated when traveling/merging catalogs and that’s why I decided to explore other options and decided to give Bridge a decent try. I’m ditching LR for 30 days and fully emerging in Bridge/ACR/PS.

I’m hopeful that with Bridge/ACR/PS I can just edit on the road and upload and import when I return home but I need to learn it first. I’m currently taking a 10.00 class that covers it all and after using it for only two weeks I already see many advantages. My first reaction is that the responsiveness and speed are far better in Bridge for culling, and editing in ACR is nearly the same as in LR once you learn where everything is. It’s a good program. There are some features LR has that Bridge doesn’t and some that Bridge has that LR doesn’t. Less than half of your list is accurate. The print module and book module are definite wins for LR. You can do better than this.

Good point, Carlos – I missed that (and I’m going to add it to the list). 🙂 Cheers.

I’m not 100% sure, but I think another missing feature in Bridge is that you can’t tell it to manage jpeg+raws as a single element, like you can do in LR (or disable it from Preferences/General). But then again, I might be wrong (or maybe it’s already on the list?).

Thanks for sharing and have a great one.

Hi, Gregg:
As for #1 – Lightroom has the same feature, and you can do the exact same naming tasks are just as easy there. As for #2, you can do the same in Lightroom, but if you like Bridge’s dialog better, I get ya (and I hear you about sharing the same Info templates across the apps). 🙂

I agree to most of this but there is a few things that Bridge does better, in my mind. And in my work flow I way start in Bridge first before importing into Lightroom Classic.

1- Renaming. You can set up templates and use them to re-name all the files. In my case my files are renamed like this 001_YYMMDD_Project_Name.Filetype or 001_231020_Boston_Lifestyle.NEF
Plus if you need to make a change to a small part of renaming. Like correct a spelling error. You can do this in Bridge but not at this point in Lightroom Classic.

2- Updating File Information. The file information templates in Bridge are easier to Populate, Change are Rename.

Once these actions have been completed. I then import into Lightroom Classic.

I also use Bridge a lot in managing post processed files. IE. In delivering final images, my picks are post processed in Lightroom Classic into under 5 meg JPGs and either full TIFFs or PSD in separate folders for each. Which are named similar to original raw files. That way in Bridge they are easily found and ready to distribute through apps like Dropbox or WeTransfer.

I do wish that the information templates could be cross app usable between Lightroom Classic and Bridge. Which they are not at this point.

Gregg Shupe – Architectural Photographer – Boston Area.