Curmudgeon wrote:
I have been using Adobe Lightroom Classic for the past couple of years. Since I do ALL my editing in Photoshop I am seriously considering moving from Lightroom to Bridge.
I use Lightroom simply as a data base to organize my photos, about 8,000 and growing. I do not use anything in Lightroom except what is available in the Library Module and since I am more than comfortable in Photoshop I see no reason to try to learn Lightroom.
Questions: Am I missing something about Lightroom? What?
For you Bridge users why do you continue to use it instead of Lightroom.
Any other comments on why you think I am/am not crazy to make this change.
I have been using Adobe Lightroom Classic for the ... (
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I moved from Bridge to Lightroom BECAUSE of it's catalog and streamlined editing interface. As plugins became more available I found that using them together with LR was easier and faster. However, if you are ok with using a file browser for looking for and viewing files by folder locations, and you have no use for virtual copies or collections, then bridge should be fine. I am not sure that as your inventory of images increases in size you'll find it as convenient, however. My library is over 120,000 images spanning 20 yrs, and I have another library of just film scans that were taken before 2000, which I rarely access anymore.
The point of virtual copies can be important, however. As I edit a file, it is not uncommon for me to want to see it with different treatments, including Black and White, high key, low key etc etc etc. Having the ability to create a virtual copy for each one makes that possible. The same goes for collections - which is a virtual way to organize files into groups by whatever criteria you choose - I take a lot of bird pictures, but I have lots of collections to find them - raptors, waders, shorebirds, finches, sparrows, warblers, etc etc etc. In addition to this these images are also organized in collections by location and season, and also if they were used in exhibitions or galleries - which is good to avoid submitting duplicates. Virtual collections let me have just one copy of the file and have them organized in a variety of ways. I use these features now much more than I used to, and I don't know where I'd be without them. I suppose I can spend some time to research alternative DAM (digital asset management) programs, but I am quite comfortable with Lightroom.
One more important (to me) difference - I rename all of my files at time of importing into the catalog. I have multiple cameras, in some cases in the past multiples of the same camera, as well as having employed second shooters with the same camera - my filenaming includes camera and serial number, and a unique sequence number that absolutely eliminates duplicate file names on import. To my knowledge there is no such capability in Bridge, and the multi-step process to batch rename files is a big PITA.
It's easy enough to have it both ways. If you don't want to use the editor in LR you can simply right click on an image in the film strip or on the main screen and select "Show in Explorer" and from there you can right click again and open it with the program that is associated with the file extension, which in your case will be Photoshop. If you want to have a 100% non-destructive workflow and you only want one file to store, both applications can do that. In Lightroom, all the edits are in lrpreview and lrcat databases which store all of the metadata changes, including edits. These changes can be written to xmp for a little more portability. In Bridge and ACR, changes are automatically written to xmp. The non-destructive nature of raw edits in ACR is preserved if you just choose Done when finished, instead of Open, which will open a raster copy (jpeg, tiff, psd, png) of your file with the edits "burned in" to the raster file. If you choose to no longer edit the file in raster form, then the file size of the raw file with edits is the same regardless of which program generated it. Of course, you won't have virtual copies or collection information in the Bridge/ACR version of the raw file.
This article summarizes the main differences:
https://www.vfpresets.com/camera-raw-vs-lightroom/