# Bridge over troubled waters



## jjlad (Mar 1, 2014)

Hi there,
I've been working all day and watching Photoshop Week on Creative Live until the wee hours and my brain is pretty well toast. 
Some 'gurus' say to use Bridge, but nobody has really said what the relationship is between Bridge & Photoshop and Lightroom.

My question is ...if an image is cataloged in LR, round tripped to Photoshop so the PSD or tiff is also cataloged in LR, what happens if that image is opened in PS *from Bridge*? Are edits then made in PS reflected in LR?


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## johnbeardy (Mar 1, 2014)

If you use Lightroom, you may never need Bridge and you're probably better off ignoring it.

To answer your question directly, the changed TIF (generally avoid PSD) will automatically update in LR. So I take a colour TIF from Bridge to Photoshop, make it B&W, and save it (not Save As, because that creates a new file which LR doesn't know about). Then I look at it in LR and you'll see it update. Just experiment and you'll see this working smoothly.

Bridge's main value for me is when I want to look at projects unrelated to photography and containing file types which LR fails to manage.

John


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## jjlad (Mar 1, 2014)

Thanks John! Great to know. Brings up another question ...Many of the Gurus presenting on Photoshop week are advocating the use of PSD files, not TIF. One reason just cited by by Jared Platt came up as he ran a droplet that created a tiff. Each step in the droplet required a decision. He said if he'd exported as a PSD, that step would have been automated and the droplet could run on hundreds of photos unattended.
So seeing that I was thinking ...PSD PSD PSD. Now seeing you say TIF ...my interest is piqued.
Also one of the presenters ...a director of some of the Adobe programming, was strongly advocating DNG's. 
As usual my eyes are crossed so far all I can see is what's behind me.

Thoughts on the above?


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## Jack Henry (Mar 1, 2014)

I think the reason the Photoshop 'Gurus' are spruiking PSD files is that now the CC is the only option, a PSD file locks you into constantly paying Adobe.  Stop paying, loose access to the PSD.

If you use TIFF then you can take your business elsewhere.


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## johnbeardy (Mar 1, 2014)

PSD has negligible benefits - saving as duotone mode, which nobody uses, displacement maps which are great for demos but no-one uses, and transparency in InDesign which only Victoria has noticed. The long term disadvantage of it being a proprietary format vastly outweigh those benefits.

To be honest, I suspect you misheard Jared. There can be a dialog box with TIFs but you can suppress it.
John


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