Manage photos & videos - Go with MS Expression Media or Adobe Bridge ?

[chris247]

Hello,

I want to organize my personal photos and videos, which software do you recommend me ?
According to my knowledge, the best would be:
- Adobe Bridge CS4
- or Microsoft Expression Media v2

Have you ever used them ? which one do you recommend me ?

Thanks, Chris

PS: I have checked Adobe Lightroom, but it is not for me: Adobe Lightroom can only manipulate photos, not videos. Even so I have a lot more photos than videos to organize, I need to be able to tag my videos as well as my photos.

[peterkrogh]

Chris,
You don't say how much data you have, if you are a pro, what kind of files you need to manage, or what system you're on, so its hard to be too specific.

But I would say that Bridge is a browser, and EM is a catalog application, so EM would be the clear choice for management, if the filetypes you need to work with are supported (need to download the demo and check).

If you're on PC, there are a couple other choices - fewer on Mac.

You might want to download the PDF of the first chapter of the book and see if it helps illuminate what you're up against.

Peter

[chris247]

> You don't say how much data you have, if you are a pro, what kind of files you need to manage, or what system you're on, so its hard to be too specific.

I have 30GB of data. I am not a pro, just a power user that has photos and videos and what to organize this.


> But I would say that Bridge is a browser, and EM is a catalog application, so EM would be the clear choice for management, if the filetypes you need to work with are supported (need to download the demo and check).

Browser vs Catalog application.. good question, here is how I see it:
ideally I would like to organize (rating, comments, tag, ...) my photos without modifying the picture. I am not very keen to use a catalog system, because I would like all information about the picture to be close to the picture on the hard-drive.
I have heard about XMP sidecar files, that would be maybe the best option. But which tool to use to do that?


> If you're on PC, there are a couple other choices - fewer on Mac.

I am on PC.