Lightroom or Bridge?

hillwalkinggirl

hillwalkinggirl

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Name
Barbara
Edit My Images
No
I'm just trying to work out which is best to use for organising my photographs.

I have just installed Lightroom onto my computer but cannot work out what is the advantage - if any- over using Lightroom instead of Bridge. It doesn't have an option to import directly from Photoshop only Elements, so is Lightroom designed to be used with Photoshop? I realise that I can open and import files from disk, but find it strange that it only has a direct link to Elements.

Is their any advantage I can gain by using Lightroom or would it be best to stick to Bridge?
 
Lightroom is designed to work with a large number of images within your image library. It will help catalog the images and process them for subsequent output. It's designed to work mainly with RAW images rather than jpegs, although it will handle them as well.

It's not a pixel editor as is Photoshop ( and Elements) It was never designed to be one. Tasks such as cloning , multiple image comps , HDR and the like are handed off to Photoshop to do the work.

What is does do is help you organise, and retrieve your images, using keywords, flags, ratings etc.

I'm not sure wheer this link to Elements is. Photoshop will export images to be edited in Elements and Photoshop, you can select either (Provided you have them on your computer).

The procedure is to import the images into the Lightroom Catalog, using the import function within the library module. You can the sort, keyword, and rate your images. This information is then stored within LR's database. You can then process the images in develop, using some rather nice tools. You can the export to Photoshop for some pixel editing, the exported image is also included within the Lightroom database, along with the original if you want.

The corrected RAW image can then be converted to a JPEG or TIFF if required using the "Export" function for other uses.

You also have web modules as well as print modules as well.

Probably the best thing to do to fully appreciate what LR can do is to check out some of the many tutorials, on the web. These will give you a better idea of what LR can do.

To be honest if you only have a "relativly" small number of images, and possibly not shoot RAW then Bridge/Photoshop may be fine for you. Lightroom isn't everyones cup of tea, but for me I would find life a lot harder without it.

As they say Remember Rule 5 ( Check out Help.>"the five rules" for the answer)
 
Thanks Chappers for a really useful reply. I think I now understand what it is all about. It was quite difficult to work out exactly what the point of it was, but your reply was really helpful, and I now see how the 3 programs intergrate. Many thanks, Barbara:thankyou:
 
i would use lightroom if i could, my computer wont handle it though as its so big. but bridge is great too, i use it all the time and works just fine for me.
 
I've tried lightroom a few times, but could never get to grips with it. Some people on the other hand love it.
Although I do use bridge pretty extensively with RAW and jpeg. It does all I want.

I'd download it and trial it for the the month before deciding.
 
I am a recent convert to Lightroom but it that is down to the large number of images I need to process. I find the workflow of converting raw files much quicker than bridge.

If you only need to convert a few raw files then I would stick with bridge.

Julian
 
Iv'e recently been remaking my lightroom catalogues and have been heavily keywording thw images. One thing i found really useful was doing the keywording in Bridge cs3 and the importing the dng files into lightroom. The keywords showed up. Lightrooms keywording is a bit clumsy IMO
 
LR is great if you are planning to have your workflow in one place. Bridge is better if your media is multi and you use more than PS in the Creative Suite.

Coming soon to LR, the ability to transfer the RAW to PS without creating a TIFF and saving the file+adjustments back into LR. This plus a few fatally brilliant plugins make LR just too good to lose once you get it onside.
 
I have just converted to LR for my equestrian work and it has speeded up my workflow loads.

Can anybody recommend one of the many books out there. I had a look at Scott Kelby's but I cant get away with how he writes!
 
Bob - Books are just too far behind. LR is changing very quickly, best to follow the development team's blogs and the user forums.
 
Agreed - just spent an hour on the beta site looking at the online video. Probably saved a fortune in time and dosh!:thumbs:
 
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