Adobe/Macromedia have been hard at work on Lightroom for a few months now.  If you're hearing about this app for the first time, Lightroom is a RAW photo processing and organization tool for photographers.  As of now, it's only available for the Apple crowd (a direct challenge to Apple's Aperture?) but a Windows version is planned at some point in the future.

I used the initial release (Beta 1) for a week or so, but deleted it shortly after.  It was taxing the processor on my 1.5ghz G4 PowerBook something fierce, and I didn't feel the need to continue with it.  The interface and tools were all nicely thought out, and the app (other than the cpu-intensive issue - seemed pretty nice.  Given that it's up to Beta 3 now, it may be time for me to give it another spin.

The Beta 3 release notes offer wider RAW format support, Before and After views, Edit History, Keyword import/export, and more.  Lightroom has been a Universal (PPC and Intel friendly) application since Beta 2.

If you're a Lightroom fan, please share your experiences with us.  I'd love to hear what you like, or don't like about it.  If you've got any comparisons to Adobe's Camera Raw, I'd be interested to hear those too.