[Johnny Brown]

Hmm. I've played with it in the beta release, and thought it was an improvement. I doubt very much if the actual import is slower given the increases in speed elsewhere, just that the interface is a little more involved.I thought it was a good thing - I'm sure once your default is set it'll be just a case of clicking ok threes times like it always was.

The other option is for instant imports is shooting tethered.

Bridge is log. Not used mechanic but why introduce another stage to the process? I use LR for the full workflow now, card to customer.

[Johnny Brown]

Looks like your prayers have been answered

and soft proofing

Not quite. Guess they had to hold something back for LR 4.

[Paul B]

Bridge is log. Not used mechanic but why introduce another stage to the process? I use LR for the full workflow now, card to customer.

Itscertainly not relevant for me that for sure but from what I've seen if you're mass importing then it saves a significant amount of time has very good backup facilities etc.
I think lightroom seems pretty slow at importing things already but maybe I'm just being impatient.

[cofe]

life is too short to use bridge.

[slackline]

How do you cross rivers then, do you wait for Charon?

[cofe]

Who's Sharon? Can she fly?

[slackline]

No, he has a boat though (and a dog called Cerebus).

[Control freak]

Bridge is log. Not used mechanic but why introduce another stage to the process? I use LR for the full workflow now, card to customer.

Id agree -- Lightroom all the way unless I have to use PS specifically for something that I cant get done in Lightroom (which unless Im doing a portrait for print or something like that is not all that often)

Even mini bridge in CS5 sucks - its ridiculously slow at enumerating and rendering the thumb nails. My computers pretty fly so youd expect it to be fairly quick

On a separate note, if anyones using CS5, ACR 6.1 has just been released

[Johnny Brown]

LR and ACR use the same rendering engine - updates are always parallel.

I don't have any issue with LR import speed old or new. You can start developing the first file whilst the rest are being imported. I suspect photo mechanic is used by folk rapidly trying to cull 2000 shots from a football match down to three selects.

[dave]

Bridge is slow, I only use it these days for once in a blue moon for keywording to make sure they're still readable by adobe shit in the future, for example when lightroom finally gives you soft proofing etc. On a similar note, can you apply ICC profiles to files in LR?

Anyone wanting a decent free and fast image file browser could do worse then checking out faststone.
http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm