djlouden Loc: Ocala, Florida

I don't consider myself a Photoshop expert, far from it. Though I started out with CS2 and then forward up to CS5, I've just never spent the time to really learn in depth so I can't comment on its' feasibility for anyone. Lightroom fits my sense of logic and presented a faster learning curve for me.

I am looking at other venues now: Paintshop, AfterShot Pro and Phase One's Capture One. Where that takes me remains to be seen.

Happy shooting.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

I'm sorry to disagree, but that's simply not true. Lightroom was designed as a digital asset management program. Realizing most photographers want to edit their photos, they included ACR in the product for editing functionality. By comparison, Bridge is not much more than an elaborate Windows Explorer.

I will contend that Elements has a more robust editor. That is its lot in life, but at the price point, there is no better portfolio management tool than LR.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

Have you ever used ACDSee? What does Lightroom do that ACDSee doesn't do? I've seen one person on the Hog that used both Liightroom and ACDSee and he prefers ACDSee. I never used Lightroom, so can't say ACDSee is better or not, but I know if you haven't used ACDSee, you can't say Lightroom is better, worse or equal. ACDSee is MUCH cheaper, and does everything I need, including smooth integration with PS and PSE, as well other photo software.

I have used Bridge, and ACDSee blows it away big time. Also, ACDSee does all the basic light editing Lightroom does far as I can tell, and is a perfect companion to PS. Not saying Lightroom is no good, but I am saying ACDSee is good, particularly at photo management. About the only bad thing about it is the file management is so robust and flexible, it has a learning curve, but very easy to use once you get it set up as you want. I assume Lightroom is the same if it's at all robust and flexible.

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

I'll have to disagree. Since I've been using Lightroom for five years and Photoshop for four, Photoshop's Bridge management system is so far above Lightroom that it's hilarious. Lightroom is an excellent program. I know. I use it. But it is still a subset of all that Photoshop and Bridge offer.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

I'm only relating what the tools were designed to do. How you use them is entirely up to you and I respect that.

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

I understand. Photoshop, though, is one of their flagship products. It's been around for 23 years and has entered the standard lexicon as photoshop, although Adobe doesn't like that. Lightroom 1.0 was released in January 2007. Bridge came out in 2005.

The advantage that Lightroom has is that one can do everything from within Lightroom with one interface. Bridge ships with Photoshop, but the interfaces of the two are totally different. I think that's why most people don't use Bridge and don't understand just how robust its digital asset management is. Indeed, I did not until I set out to do in Photoshop everything that I previously was doing in Lightroom, PaintShop Pro, Photo-Paint, Corel Draw, and even Word (which has some pretty nice framing functions).

Once I put my prejudices and biases behind me, I was able to see just how far advanced Bridge was over Lightroom. On the other hand, though, I do appreciate Lightroom's one interface for doing both management and editing as opposed to having to use Bridge for management and Photoshop for editing. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that within five years, Adobe makes Bridge an integral part of the Photoshop interface. I could be wrong, though, because Bridge can be invoked from within all components of Creative Suite except Acrobat. It can be used as a standalone program for digital asset management.

sportyman140 Loc: Juliette, GA

I Concur :)