We’ve covered Lightroom from early in the beta. Now adobe have put up a product page, thanked the half-million beta testers, and announced that Lightroom won’t be a part of CS3, but will be shipping mid-feb, for an introductory price of US$199 (until May, then $299).
I feel that $200 is quite reasonable for the standalone product. I’ve been loving Lightroom for my image tagging, cropping and simple colour correction needs, and for gifted amateur photographers who want a little more power but don’t have the time or inclination to learn Photoshop it’s absolutely superb. I can definitely see where Photoshop users would want to use it instead of Bridge though, so I’d hope that there will be some of Lightroom’s workflow improvements implemented in Photoshop CS3, or that a bundled version will be available at a later date.
Vista Compatibility: Works, but no CD or DVD burning