If you already use ...

[Gibbo]

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... Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, is there any value in using Bridge? And if so, what is it?

[LocalHero1953]

1 hour ago, Gibbo said:

... Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, is there any value in using Bridge? And if so, what is it?

I have just discovered a value in using Bridge: batch processing images in Photoshop.

I created an Action in PS (a sequence of processing steps), and named it. In Bridge I selected a group of images and (using Tools>Photoshop>Image Processor) apply the named Action to all of them.

The reason for doing this is to apply a particular PS tool that is not available in Lightroom. 

I know @jaapv is considerably more experienced in Bridge and PS than I am, so I may have missed a simpler way of doing the same thing.

More generally, I guess, Bridge provides the file and image manager that Lightroom includes but Photoshop does not.

Edited July 24, 2024 by LocalHero1953

[250swb]

 Bridge is a fantastic browser. I’ve always used it from my first experiments with digital way back before Lightroom was invented and wanted to use the same traditional filing system of film with folders by name and date etc. I never could see how Lightroom ‘collections’ work in my ordered brain, but that is how Lightroom started out, as a means to make some temporary sense out of chaos. It was for the likes of Press photographers who were sat on the touch line at a football match and wanted to rapidly send off some quickly saved and ordered images. But it was never a great system for photographers who’d always managed to catalogue their own photos in film sleeves, or by intellectual extension in storing images in ordered digital folders on a hard drive.

So that aside you can find all your files in the place you left them, browse them, and do all your admin like adding tags plus download files and put them into folders and add sequential custom numbering and names, and loads of other things I don’t even use.

[Olaf_ZG]

13 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

I have just discovered a value in using Bridge: batch processing images in Photoshop.

I created an Action in PS (a sequence of processing steps), and named it. In Bridge I selected a group of images and (using Tools>Photoshop>Image Processor) apply the named Action to all of them.

The reason for doing this is to apply a particular PS tool that is not available in Lightroom. 

I know @jaapv is considerably more experienced in Bridge and PS than I am, so I may have missed a simpler way of doing the same thing.

More generally, I guess, Bridge provides the file and image manager that Lightroom includes but Photoshop does not.

Instead of using Bridge, one could create a droplet, and then, in LR export with selecting respective droplet.

Personally I don’t use Bridge, as I use PhotoMechanic which is a huge timesaver for culling.

[LocalHero1953]

1 hour ago, Olaf_ZG said:

Instead of using Bridge, one could create a droplet, and then, in LR export with selecting respective droplet.

Personally I don’t use Bridge, as I use PhotoMechanic which is a huge timesaver for culling.

I must read up about droplets!

[Olaf_ZG]

10 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

I must read up about droplets!

Droplet is an action from PS, but can be used in other programs.

[LocalHero1953]

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50 minutes ago, Olaf_ZG said:

Droplet is an action from PS, but can be used in other programs.

I've just been reading about them. Look useful!