alex & co.

Adobe Lightroom 2 vs Bridge CS4

Ever since I’ve been shooting digital I have used the Bridge CS4 + Photoshop combo for all of my photo managing and editing needs. Since I work as a designer, I know my way around CS4 and Photoshop pretty well, and didn’t particularly want to have to teach myself a new software and workflow. Plus I tend to do a lot of post-processing, and love the control that working with masks and layers in Photoshop offers.

I’ve always kind of regarded Adobe Lightroom as a glorified iPhoto, but curiosity got the best of me and I decided to give Lightroom a whirl. All I can say is that if you have been on the fence between Bridge or Lightroom… go with Lightroom. It’s a no brainer. Lightroom really shines by letting you organize and classify photos without having to create duplicates. Which when you are dealing with lots of RAW files, is a huge space saver. Additionally, it makes it effortless to tag photos and export to a number of different formats, including uploading straight to Flickr.

I could go into a more detailed pro vs. con scenario, but there’s already plenty of analysis available by using your friendly searchbox. Just take it from a fellow photog that whether you’re a pro or amateur, Lightroom is a great tool for managing photos and making minor adjustments, and it plays well with Photoshop. Lightroom does everything Bridge can do and when combined with Photoshop is a necessary tool for the digital photographer.

End of Summer Update

The day’s are getting shorter, temperatures are dropping, and the leaves are turning, which means Winter’s just around the corner. Not sure if I am quite ready for it… i still need to get in some more quality time with the bicycle. However, I was fortunate enough this summer to make it down South of the equator for a taste of Winter and logged some summer turns. Head over to the Flickr page to see all the shots.

back to the basics

Recently I had the opportunity to do a bit of traveling through Costa Rica. Though it was only for a few weeks, traveling gave me some much needed perspective on life and what I want to achieve. Taking some time and stripping away all the unnecessary commodities like internet, twitter, television, etc… is a great way to step outside your comfort zone and ground yourself.