Out of sync - Lightroom & Bridge

Question

I have about 550 images that I shot in Canon Raw. I launched Adobe Bridge so that I could make some universal/global changes to all of the images (Camera Profile,  White Balance, Contrast, Vibrance, Clarity, etc.) in Camera Raw. After I made the changes, I launched Lightroom so that I could tweak the images individually. Occasionally, I'd have the need to go back and forth between Lightroom and Bridge, when I'd want to make more global changes to multiple images.
What I'm now finding is that the images are not in sync between the two applications. I'll make changes in Bridge (Camera Raw) to several images, and then go back to Lightroom, and the changes aren't reflected. In Lightroom, I choose "Syncronize Folder", and it goes through the motions, but the images don't sync. When I go to open each image in Photoshop from Lightroom & Bridge, I still have two separate, completely deferent images. If I open the image from the Finder, I get the Bridge version, which is the last version that I've modified.
Help!?
Thanks,
Jeff

Answer 1

Before an explanation of having LR and Bridge/ACR see each other's edits, please note that the global things you say you are doing in ACR/Bridge can be done just as easily in LR and maybe easier, using the Sync... button or Copy/Paste settings and you'll save yourself a lot of grief and needing to be careful if you forget about Bridge/ACR for en masse things whenever possible, as long as you are using LR with the same images.
Ok now for how to make Bridge and ACR see each other's changes:
Bridge stores edits in an XMP sidecar, while LR stores them internally and to synchronize them is not always as easy as you'd expect; however, if you manually read and write the XMP files from LR then you can make it work.
First, you should make sure that your default settings for toning and everything else are identical between ACR and LR otherwise LR and ACR will use their defaults for things that aren't specified in the XMP files and you might have differences.
If you do things in Bridge/ACR as your very first step, then it should generate XMP files that have the same base filename as the RAW but with an XMP extension.  When you import files into LR then it will use things it sees in the XMP sidecar files for its initial settings, but then it internalizes them and you have to do something to make it write the changes back out to the XMP files if you are going to edit them in Bridge, again. 
If your first step is to Import the files into LR for sorting then Bridge won't know anything about any changes you also make unless you create XMP files for the images you've changed.
You can either have LR automatically write the changes to XMP files (a preference sets this) or you can do it manually by doing Library / (select all) / Metadata / Write Changes to Files (note the S on Files if multiple files are selected which they aren't if you are in Develop) and this is safest, anyway, in case LR hasn't caught up writing things automatically to XMP files if you've made mass changes in LR. 
Once any LR changes are in the XMP files, then Bridge/ACR will see them. 
Once you are done with Bridge/ACR you have to do something to tell LR there are changes it needs to look for in the XMP files, since its primary location for changes is in its internal database.  You can use Library / (select all) / Metadata / Read Changes from Files to overwrite LR's settings with whatever is in the XMP file.
You have to be careful with this and not erase changes by writing when you should be reading or reading when you should be writing.  To fix the situation you find yourself in, now, you may have to forego your changes in either LR or Bridge by telling LR to editor Read Metadata from Files (overwrites LR changes) or Write Metadata to Files (overwrites Bridge changes).
I think the Synchronize can be used if the dates in the XMP file are newer than what LR has internally but I'm not sure if this always works and someone else will have to give the definite answer on Synchronize.  I gave up using Bridge/ACR along with LR a long time ago and just do all my en masse edits in LR and just use ACR the conversion into Photoshop when I use Edit In Photoshop from LR.
There are other things to be aware of:  LR has a Write Metadata to Files on the right-click menu from a library folder.  This is a shortcut for producing the initial set of XMP files, but it only does this for images where something has actually changed since the file was imported or since the last time the XMP was updated from LR, so you may have to trick it by selecting all the files and doing a relative up and down of something in the Quick Develop panel--something like Clarity or Saturation that is not likely to be maxed out in any of the files that you're tweaking settings of just to make the changes "newer" than the last time.