Adobe has released a Windows version of its Lightroom application for testers to try out. Lightroom is a new photo-editing tool for professional photographers out there to help manage the workflow from initial shooting to finished product. For those that want to take a stab at the beta software, you can head over to Adobe Labs to download it. This Beta 3 version will expire on January 30, 2007.

The concept behind Lightroom is to provide a single environment that has all of the functions photographers most commonly need to perform on their images. But we're not interested in trying to pack all the knobs and switches into Lightroom that a photographer might ever need. The goal of Lightroom is to have the RIGHT knobs and switches, in the cleanest, least cluttered, easiest to use package. It's not about having every tool in the hardware store. It's about having a focused set of features that are just right for photography, are intuitive, powerful, and easy to learn. So yes, it's an image editing tool, and it's a workflow productivity tool.