I just checked my (free) Adobe Creative Cloud plan and it shows Lightroom (the new cloud one), Bridge, and something called ‘UXP Developer Tools’ as available apps. So yes, Bridge is available for free. But you do need a (free) Adobe account.
when I tested Photo Mechanic three years ago, it didn’t even support destination aka “location shown” coordinates. This was a show stopper for me. And it didn’t support a personal Google Maps key, so you depend on the built-in key whether you can use the mapping feature.
ACDSee has weak metadata export. If you are happy with (rely on) the ACDSee database, don’t care.
there are rumors this might end now. And the LR installation is rather invasive. I never could delete all Adobe services from my PC after the trial.
Interesting. I wonder where the rumours are coming from? Adobe have certainly been posturing a lot lately, making it seem like Lightroom will not run, but it continues to do so.
There was the recent “forced” trial which on completion said “This is the last time Lightroom will open” but that was a lie. Every time I open Lightroom it pops up the window asking me to subscribe and there is a similar message saying “Close the window to exit Lightroom.” Another lie. Finally in the Adobe Creative Cloud app (the invasive part of the installation) it lists Lightroom as “Expired trial” and not in the same section as Bridge which it touts as freely available.
Net result? I bet a lot of people stopped using it or paid up. But for me, it’s the same as it was before all the posturing. Open Lightroom, close the nag window, use Lightroom (Library module only, of course).
EDIT: If they do lock it out there will be some very unhappy people because I have heard (but not seen) that Adobe promise license expiry will not prevent users accessing their images — which I take to mean the Library module will continue to work.
Well, of course it won’t. Your images will always exist on disk, it’s just that you will possibly not be able to benefit from any edits you might have made. It’s all in the very clever wording.
That was my poor wording. I did a search and found theirs: