I give Bridge a fair-dinkum try-out every three or four years. It never lasts for long. Too slow, too cumbersome, and really rather pointless. What does it do that other programs don't do faster and better? Nothing that I can think of.* For downloading images, Downloader Pro is the best-in-class. For viewing and organising, any of several made-for-purpose image viewers: my favourite is PMView but there are about six other good ones, including XNView and Faststone. They blitz Bridge comprehensively: faster and better.
* Exception. I once wanted to do slightly weird raw conversion stuff with a whole batch of images and Bridge was the easiest way. What weird stuff? Don't really remember.
- - - Updated - - -
PS: I forgot to mention Lightroom. Wouldn't touch it with a 3.048 metre pole. It wants to take over your entire computer. Errk. It doesn't even have a "file/open" function so that you can work on the file you want to work on: no, you have to give it every damn thing. Very arrogant and greedy. Yuk!
As I am much more of a PS user than a LR user, I use Bridge to select which photos to keep and which are worthy of further post-processing.
So, I copy my photos from my camera to a new folder on my computer, open the folder in Bridge and use Ctrl-L to view and rate the photos - 1 star to keep, occasionally 2 stars for a 'wow' photo.
I then delete the photos with 0 stars, and again view the photos using Ctrl-L, and now rate the better photos with 2 stars and any 'wow' photos with 3 stars. I then delete the 1 star photos.
If I now want to process the remaining photos (eg if I have photographed an event such as a race), this is when I would open the remaining photos in LR and do some post-processing, using the Sync option to save lots of time.
Cheers, Rex
I use Bridge to import files and then do almost all my editing in Adobe Camera Raw (from Photoshop CS5). I do most of my shooting with a Nikon D700 and in the process of replacing that with a D800 and both of those are supported in that ancient version of Photoshop.
My Nikon D7500 isn't supported so stuck with pre-converting into DNG via Adobe DNG Converter.
I have never warmed to Lightroom. I just find ACR much easier to use and what I cannot do in ACR is covered by either Photomatix (and then finished in ACR anyway), Photoshop of Microsoft ICE.
Happy to keep going this way and as I am now retired and live on next to nothing, don't want to get messed up with multiple subscriptions to software.
Cheers
PeterB666
Olympus Pen F with Metabones Speed Booster and Laowa 12mm f/2.8 or Voigtlander 10.5mm f/0.95 or Nikon D800 with the Laowa 12mm f/2.8. The need to keep in touch with the past is a Nikon Photomic FTn or Nikon F2A and a Nikkor 25-50mm f/4 AI