I'm new in shooting RAW. I haven't tried the Bridge yet. How is this thing work and should I buy David Jay's brilliant set up or Kubota's?
Happy New Year!!!

As far as I know, Bridge is a way to view all the images that you would like to add effects to. Then select the ones you want to add, like for instance, Lomo It, to the entire collection. It'll open in Photoshop in either by Batch or Image Processor. This menu option can be found under Tools in Adobe Bridge.

For some reason I used to preview & sort photos in Bridge then open 25 RAW files in Camera Raw... then SAVE them after getting through the 25.

Make selections of images to keep. I usually add one star ratings to these.
Any I might want to make B&W I give 2 stars to.

Then I change the view to only show me images with 1 star ratings or higher, and start selecting shots with similar lighting / content and I can change the whole batch with pretty good accuracy. I do go back in to edit one or two files when I see a thumbnail image that looks a little off.

The first time I did this workflow I got a wedding sorted, picked, edited, double checked, processed to JPGs and began to upload them to my proof gallery in under 5 hours on a slow Sunday evening. My old route took me several days and several delays processing and saving only a handful of shots each time.

One thing I liked especially about Kubota's ACR Settings is that they seem to layer. You can bump exposure or white balance up / down from your last ACR instruction without it resetting. This meant fewer photos opened in ACR to manually adjust them.

There are a lot of helpful workflow tips & tutorials around here that have saved me hours of work. What do I do in my free time? Actually dig through and write on forums now! And chill, for the record, I do that too.

eB

Download Lightroom from Adobe. It is free for the next fee weeks.

+1.

For photographers, LR offers a more focused workflow. I am reasonably certain it will replace Bridge for most of us.

K

Can you tell me if I can use Image Processor through LR like I can in Bridge???

I have a quick tutorial on how I use Bridge here. If you have more questions, send me an email and I'll answer them on the blog.
Cory