James_N Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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splathrop wrote:
Okay, I think I am better oriented. Two more questions. Are there raw adjustment tools in Bridge that are not present in Lightroom? Are there any in Lightroom not present in Bridge?
Here are the differences between Bridge/CS4 and Lightroom 3 as far as I can tell:
1. Browser vs database. Adobe Bridge is a file browser while Lightroom is a database (at its back end it is running SQLite; an open source database). What this means in practical terms is that Lightroom allows you to edit and manage images files that are stored off-line. By comparison, Bridge works with a much wider range of digital assets but can only keep track of images that are physically connected to your computer. For example, lets say you have a desktop computer and a laptop. You can take a copy of your Lightroom database on your laptop and do basic editing, add metadata etc to the Lightroom catalog(database). then sync the changes back to your desktop. You cannot do this with Bridge since it needs the images to be physically present in order to do anything. Images stored off-line cannott be edited nor tracked/searched in Bridge. So if you have images stored on external drives that are not always connected to your computer Lightroom's file management is superior.
2. Match Total Exposure - this is a biggie that most users aren't aware of and it is only available in Lightroom. For photographers like me who shoot lots of events this is a huge bonus.
Here's how Martin Evening describes the function:
"You can use this command to match the exposure brightness across a series of images that have been selected via the Filmstrip. Match Total Exposures calculates a match value by analyzing and combining the shutter speed, the lens aperture, the ISO speed at which the photos were captured, plus any camera-set exposure compensation. It then factors in all these camera-set values, combines them with the desired exposure value (as set in the most selected image), and calculates new Lightroom exposure values for all the other selected images. I find that this technique can often be used to help average out the exposure brightness in a series of photos where the light values were going up and down during a shoot, which is probably why the chief Lightroom architect, Mark Hamburg, also liked to describe this as a "de-bracketing" command."
3. Virtual copies - a Lightroom feature that allows you to make multiple copies and editing treatments with little additional overhead space (each VC uses about 2 Kb). Both Lightroom 3 and Bridge CS5 allow the use of Snapshots - a picture of the editing history at a particular point but only Lightroom has Virtual Copies. I don't remember if Snapshots are present in Bridge CS4.
4. Crop Guide Overlays - Lightroom has six different crop overlays compared to only the Rule of Thirds overlay in Bridge CS5. I don't recall any crop overlays in Bridge CS4.
5. Bridge reports Subject Distance as calculated by the lens/camera body while that functionality was removed from Lightroom 3.x.
6. Targeted Adjustment Tool - a neat feature in Lightroom that allows you to make Hue, Saturation, Luminance adjustments in Lightroom. This tool is included in Adobe Bridge/ACR CS5 but is not in earlier versions.
If none of this appeals to you I'd say keep using Bridge. I still use Bridge for "one off" images but for large batches I prefer to use Lightroom.
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