Bridge collections panel

I've been looking at some of the new features of CS5 and am taking a look at the collections panel within Bridge. I've don't use LR and and wondered how the collections panel stacks up against the catalog in LR. I'm pretty comfortable in my work flow with Bridge/ACR/PS so I don't need LR, but always hear the catalog in LR is the main advantage over Bridge. Any opinions on collections versus catalog?

The Collections panel would have the same purpose as the Collections panels in Lightroom, Elements and DPP -- a way of organizing photos by a user-defined criteria that goes across folders and doesn't require keywords. It's definitely a nice feature to have (one thing I missed when I first went from Elements to CS2). That's not a "big deal" that would now make Bridge "like Lightroom", it's just a feature, but nice to have.

Thanks Tony. I didn't get the feeling it was the same as LR cataloging, but thought it looked interesting. I played around a little with it and also the smart collections. It does seem like a nice feature, although it wouldn't find images on a external drive that was turned off. I'll have to dig around a little more on them.

D Thompson wrote in post #10187942
Thanks Tony. I didn't get the feeling it was the same as LR cataloging, but thought it looked interesting. I played around a little with it and also the smart collections. It does seem like a nice feature, although it wouldn't find images on a external drive that was turned off. I'll have to dig around a little more on them.

Well, that's probably because the LR catalog is more highly developed than the Bridge catalog is. Bridge is designed to be a browser with some catalog features. Retaining a link to "missing" files and folders in the way LR does hasn't made it in there, evidently. Of course, it makes sense that they would not make Bridge "be all that Lightroom is" in the same way they don't put a built-in Photoshop-type editor in LR. Keep the programs unique and keep your customers coming back!

tonylong wrote in post #10188015
Keep the programs unique and keep your customers coming back!

Oh you're exactly right there. Look how many people have both. I don't really need to access a image on an external as they're typically used for backup only. The CS's do everything I need so never really looked at wasting (for me) the $$ for LR.

Well, Lightroom works well for me and my workflow because I do all my work with most of my images in the Raw processor, including printing and outputting for Web use, etc. It's great in combination with CSx, and it's nice that you can upgrade LR for the price of buying Elements and allow CS to fall back in upgrades because you have the up-to-date Raw processor in LR.