Adobe Lightroom vs Bridge!

with Blake Rudis

In this interview Blake Rudis of F64Academy.com joins the show to explain why he thinks Adobe Bridge is the superior option to Adobe Lightroom. Could it be true? Find out as Blake tales the Lr v Br challenge!

About Blake Rudis

Blake Rudis is USAF Combat Veteran and a classically trained artist who started as a painter. Blake transitioned into printmaking and sculpture where he received his BFA in Fine art from the University of Delaware.

His passion for art shifted when he finally decided to double down on his love for the American landscape. In 2006 Blake took up photography, but he incorporates his knowledge of aesthetics and color theory in his courses and is known for his acclaimed Photoshop® workflow.

https://thisweekinphoto.com/f64academy

3 Comments

  1. One of the very few professional photographers that do not use Lightroom. I’d say about 95% or more use Lightroom. My work flow?

    1. Take my raw and import into Bridge. Use Bridge as a culling device.
    2. Open the remaining raw files into ACR “enhance” feature. To apply some magic and make a much larger image, suitable for cropping.
    3. Take the enhanced DNG files into DxO’s PureRaw for further refinement.
    4. Import the remaining DNG images into Lightroom.
    5. When needed, I might also use Luminar AI, Topaz deNoise, and/or Topaz Sharpen on select images. For instance, I photographed inside an aquarium and I still had some noise, so I put those through deNoise to fix and it worked!

  2. Bridge can no longer be started from Photoshop v22 after problems with the M1 chip. A minor nuisance.
    Bridge has a severely-limited Return To Photoshop icon (boomerang) which implies a round-trip (used to) exist.
    It’s the little things. 🙂

  3. Hi guys, thanks for sharing this one, good stuff.

    Just want to note, that Bridge tends to work faster on older machines compared to Lightroom – much faster in my experience. This comes into play, when you review photos with the clients on location. I did use Lightroom to import the files – more options for renaming files, but looked at the files in Bridge, as it opens the files much faster and allows to zoom in as needed, almost instantly.

    So it’s back to Blake, use the tools and workflows that suit your needs.