Adobe's Lightroom due January 29?
Adobe Systems plans to make an announcement about its Photoshop Lightroom product on January 29, the company said in an invitation to news media.
The company didn't disclose what it plans to announce, but a launch of Lightroom is likely. In September, Adobe said it hoped to release Lightroom 1.0 in late 2006 or early 2007, and the product has been in public beta testing for months.
Lightroom is used to edit digital photographs, in particular the "raw" images from higher-end cameras. Raw images haven't been processed by the camera into more portable formats such as JPEG and are popular among photo enthusiasts and professionals who want extensive control over factors such as exposure and color balance. Photoshop Lightroom lacks many features of Adobe's Photoshop image-editing software, which can process raw images one at time but also can handle text, the combination of multiple images, and sophisticated special effects.
Lightroom will be more than the consumer-oriented Photoshop Elements, which costs about $100, and less than Photoshop, which typically costs more than $600, Adobe said earlier.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
