Bridge vs. Lightroom and .dng

[thunter5]

Hi Everyone.

I'm wondering if anyone who has PS CS3/Bridge also uses Lightroom?

Seems there is some debate from "Pros" saying they use Lightroom then bring the image into PHCS3.

What do you guys think? I'm wondering if I should buy Lightroom and learn it to as I'm studying PS3 now...

One More thing. ".DNG"

Do you guys convert you images to .dng?

Thanks!

[Mr. Pickles]

By using the "word" PH, I assume you mean PS, as in PhotoShop...?

There is no real difference in the RAW engine between Bridge and Lightroom. SO if you are doing RAW development, or comparing, it isn't really an end result thing.

I think there are a lot of folks (not just Pros) that use Lightroom, and on some images do final polishing in PS (CS, CS2, CS3 or even PSE). By final polishing, it is really just about using layers and making composites or removing large areas of distractions because Lightroom has ALL the tools to tweak the image. You should get the free trial of Lightroom and see how it works for you. You may not like the interface.

As for DNG, I convert mine to DNG, and have for years. Did it with Canon files and Olympus files.

For both of these, rummage through this board (or use the Search feature) for more info on BOTH of these topics....

[thunter5]

Thank you for the input. I "Did" mean PS, (Photoshop) when I said PH.

I have downloaded the Lightroom trial and find it "Better Looking" with kind of a "Cool" interface, but a little hard to understand. I'm sure if I spend more time in it I'll figure it out. I just was looking to see what do most other people do when they are processing RAW images.

There is a lot of great advice on this board and most people know a lot more about this stuff then I do. That's what I like doing is "Stand of the shoulders of Giants." or another way to put it: "Learn Stuff FAST."

I'm just curious what a lot of the top photographers here do: Camera>Lightroom>Photoshop, or, Camera>Bridge>Photoshop. Maybe it's both and depends on how you like to work, or the type of photos you took?

Thanks for the info on .dng conversion. I seems to save about a meg off a 7meg CR2 file so it 's worth doing the conversion with no loss. It sounds like this is what you do and from what I've read, it makes sense to convert over to .dng right out of the camera before you start to work on the images.

Thanks again for the info. This place rocks!

[peterst6906]

As Pickles said, the RAW conversion engine in Lightroom and ACR are basically the same, with just some minor differences (eg. there is a targetted adjustment tool in Lightroom that isn't currently in ACR), but the end result out of both converters will be exactly the same if the same parameters are used in the conversion.

However, the difference between Lightroom and PS is that all LR adjustments are non-destructive and the instructions for the conversion are written to a separate file. The original file is not changed at all. Each time you produce a new version of an image, you are essentialy producing a virgin image that is directly linked to the original data.

However, PS is more of a pixel pusher. That is, once you go from LT to PS or ACR to PS, the image has been interpreted and now all the work is being done on the individual pixels. The more work you do, the further away from the original data you go.

The advantage of PS is then that since you are changing pixels, you can change them to whatever you like. So cloning, patching, compositing, erasing, masking, etc. all become available, where they are not available to the same extent in LR (Lightroom has spot removal and the sharpening tools use masks, but otherwise your options are limited).

In my own workflow I use both programs and now do almost all my tonal adjustments, cropping and straightening in Lightroom.

I then use Photoshop for some specific adjustments using Lab (in Lightroom you only have access to RGB, not Lab or CMYK) and I use it to remove unwanted elements of an image or to composite elements into an image. For portraits I use PS for skin softening and for adjusting the lighting, neither or which you can do in LR.

Finally, there are two significant limitations in LR at the moment that I overcome with Photoshop. Firstly there is no softproofing capability in LR, so I use PS for that; and the output sharpening options in LR are not very suitable for what I do, so I do all output sharpening in PS (although all my capture sharpening is now done in LR).

Overall, I think the two programs work well together and even when softproofing and better sharpening are added to LR (probably in V.2), I'll still use Photoshop for the extra things it provides.

Regards,

Peter

[brian.austin]

I follow a similar workflow as Peter and Mr. Pickles. No need to address that part.

One thing I didn't see is an answer to your question:

I'm just curious what a lot of the top photographers here do: Camera>Lightroom>Photoshop, or, Camera>Bridge>Photoshop. Maybe it's both and depends on how you like to work, or the type of photos you took?

Typically, once you start using one of the two applications (Bridge or LR), you'll want to stick with it. This is because the import process doesn't automatically pick up images already seen by the OTHER application unless you tell the apps to specifically look in certain areas.

Personally, I switched to LR last year in May and haven't looked back. Yes, it's different and the workflow isn't the same as Bridge. There are several good tutorials and articles linked from LightroomNews to help you get started.

[thunter5]

Guys, this is great information.

I understand there are things you can only do in PS, (Those were great comments Peter about the differences I didn't even think about!).

It sounds like people use LR and PS together and it is worth the money to purchase LR and add it to your tool box. I knew LR was non destructive, but thought Bridge was also.

The basic feeling I had was Bridge and LR were mostly the same and the major differences were the GUIs. It sounding like there is more going on then I thought in LR and once you start using it, it becomes an important part of your photo editing process. I will check out those tutorials as Brain suggested.

P.S. I took your advice Mr. Pickles and searched the threads for .dng. Great stuff there and I should have done this before I posted the question. I'm experimenting with conversion and didn't know LR will do it for you? (Or so I read...) maybe another reason to use LR.

Great stuff to know. Thanks PIckles, Peter, and Brian.

[Mr. Pickles]

Originally Posted by brian.austin

One thing I didn't see is an answer to your question:

Quote:
I'm just curious what a lot of the top photographers here do: Camera>Lightroom>Photoshop, or, Camera>Bridge>Photoshop. Maybe it's both and depends on how you like to work, or the type of photos you took?

One reason I didn't specifically address it is because you can't. There are probably as many different workflows among "top photograhers here" as there are camera bodies in use by those individuals.

There is no best way. The only way that is best is the one that the user likes the best. Very similar to the end result of post processing. It is subjective and you will find some who would have tweaked this or that differently.

LR is "different" in it interface, but wasn't as hard to "learn" as PSCS was for me. I like the LR interface more than most others. Some like the old RSP/RSE one better. Some like different ones. But it is how it works for you, and what you do with it that counts.

But, once you got a flow that works, quit reading these threads about other software. Switching can be brutal