Adobe Bridge Equivalent

[Niki Park]

Hi! Long time Adobe user here. Thinking about making the switch to Affinity Designer and Photo. But I'm wondering what Affinity users use in place of Adobe Bridge. Thanks!

[Ldina]

@Niki Park There really is no "full" equivalent. I guess it depends on what features you want and need. 

I also was a full time Adobe user for over 20 years. I used Bridge and LightRoom a lot. Affinity Apps have various options when you choose File > New, one of which is a Recents option (see attached screenshot). You can also use Open and navigate to a folder and display your all images in the folder as columns, lists, icons, etc. I used Mac Finder and XnViewMP (free download) for viewing images. I often drag and drop files into Affinity (RAW, TIFF, JPG, etc) from my viewer.. XnView displays a lot of metadata and other file attributes and has a lot of nice features, especially for a free download. None of these offer raw development settings, like ACR/LR. For that, you'd need a 3rd party digital asset manager (some paid, some free). I don't use one and have gotten used to a new workflow. 

Not sure if this answers your question. If you are more specific, we can provide more guidance.

 

 

 

[Old Bruce]

2 minutes ago, Niki Park said:

I'm wondering what Affinity users use in place of Adobe Bridge. Thanks!

I use my Mac's Finder to organize and tag my images and occasionally the Canon application DPP4 for culling my Canon raw files. I have always used the Finder to sort and organize my photos even back in the day when I had the Adobe CS applications including Bridge. Your computer's file system can be your friend and is fairly future-proof.

[Ldina]

3 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I use my Mac's Finder to organize and tag my images

Ditto! My files have always been organized this way (even when I was a Windows PC user). 

[CliveH]

If you know and like Bridge then why not continue to use it?  You can get it without a subscription and link to Photo as your editor.

[Ldina]

4 minutes ago, CliveH said:

If you know and like Bridge then why not continue to use it?

True, Bridge CC is free and still works for many file formats (DNG, RAW, JPG, TIFF, and even some 3rd party formats).

Unfortunately, Bridge doesn't show thumbnails of Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher files (or if it can, I don't know how to enable them). I suspect Adobe chooses not to support Affinity formats in Bridge since they are a direct competitor? 

[dominik]

46 minutes ago, Niki Park said:

Hi! Long time Adobe user here. Thinking about making the switch to Affinity Designer and Photo. But I'm wondering what Affinity users use in place of Adobe Bridge. Thanks!

Hello @Niki Park and welcome to the forum!

As mentioned in this thread already you can continue to use Bridge. The major drawback is that it does not show previews of Affinity files (to my knowledge).

There have been various discussions here on this topic and it all is on Digital Asset Management (a.k.a. DAM). Search the forum and you will find a lot to read.

For some time I was using XNViewMP that has a lot to offer but about two years ago I decided to go with ACDSee Home. It all depends on your needs but in terms of culling images, tagging, keywording and building collections it works in a similar way as Bridge. It can be a little overwhelming in the beginning.

I want to link to one extensive thread here in the forum that should be a good starting point for your research:

d.