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.

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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!