After a year of beta testing on their product Adobe has released Lightroom 1.0 to the public. If you are interested in purchasing, now is the time. Until April 30th you can get it for $199, after that it will be $299.

Review by bigpicture.net: Designed for professional photographers, the software allows users to import, manage, and present large volumes of photographs. Significant changes since beta 4.1 include: new advanced key-wording tools in the Library module, an improved import dialogue with more flexible file handling; an improved Key Metadata Browser; Virtual Copies and Snapshot tools in the Develop module to present multiple versions of the same image; Hue-, Saturation-, and Luminance-adjustment tools; and Clone and Healing tools to eliminate dust spots.

Lightroom features include extensive workflow support; professional editing tools such as white-balance correction, exposure, tonal curves, and black-and-white conversion; non-destructive editing; flexible viewing and comparison tools; an interface featuring task-oriented modules; automatic tracking of image changes; fast, high-quality printing; and presentation capabilities such as the assembly of contact sheets, online Web galleries, and slide shows.

The software utilizes Adobe Camera Raw technology and supports more than 150 native Raw file formats, as well as JPEG and TIFF. Once imported, files can be converted to the Digital Negative specification (DNG).