Is keeping Bridge current necessary while using the Lightroom-CS6 Workflow

Question

Hi Folks,
I totally get and daily use the LR4 to CS6 workflow, although I'd consider myself not much more than a beginner with PS.  My question is - is there a need when adding photos to the LR database, to at the same time (or at some point), make sure that all the files are going to an accessible (can follow the path/find the photo) in BR?  Or can I just forget about Br and just keep using a very understandible and efficient workflow?  Further, if there is a reason to keep BR current, can it be automated to populate appropriate files so that if I add photos to LR, they will easily be found in BR, without me having to do any additional moving/importing of files to BR?  Also, if I need to have BR current, how would I use it in a workflow that mainly incorporates LR and PS6?  Lastly, if there is a way of getting photos to go to BR from LR(or accessed/seen by BR is probably more appropriate), if I have done the ratings and keywords in LR, will these be transferrable to BR somehow- again, preferrably using some type of action/automation in the background?  Thanks very much in advance for your comments.

Answer 1

When you have Lr and Photoshop you don't need Bridge at all for your workflow.
When you work with Lr 4.3 and CS6 a Raw image that you intend to edit in CS6 will open as Raw in CS6 (bypassing Bridge) - but when you save a PSD (or TIFF) will be created.
And when you just <save> - versus <save as> - your image will automatically show up in Lr. Bridge doesn't even open during that "roundtrip" from Lr to CS and back to Lr.
As twenty-one has already said: Bridge is a file-browser type of program. That means it "sees" whatever is on the hard drive, no matter by which progam it has been put there.
Lr is not a file-browser based program. It "sees" images only when they have been imported in Lr. If they have not been importent they don't exist for Lr - even if they are on the hard drive.
So Bridge can be used as an auxiliary program to check out which images are actually on the hard drive. And that can be very useful - particularly when you are still learning to work with Lr.
Another advantage is that Bridge supports more file formats than Lr. Lr works only with Raw images, JPGs, TIFFs, PSDs. For instance, Lr doesn't work with PDFs and doesn't display them, whereas Bridge does.
Writing metadata to file (or synonym: write changes to xmp) in order that Bridge will display the Lr edits is quite straightforward in Lr. There is no need to "associate them with the appropriate raw file". Lr does that for you.
You can set Lr to <Automatically write changes to XMP>, or do it manually for a single or multiple images by pressing Ctr. / Cmd. + letter S on the keyboard. That's all.
Stars and keywords will be included in the metadata, and also titles, captions and all EXIF data. For color labels to transfer correctly between Lr and Bridge you need to describe the labels in exactly the same way (including hyphens, undersscores, etc) in both programs.
But there are features in Lr that are not saved to xmp, not saved to file. These are: that an image belongs to a collection, virtual copies, stacking.
They are not saved to xmp because Bridge doesn't have these features, and so could not display them even if they were saved.