Earlier tonight, Adobe released a new version of Lightroom: a public beta of Lightroom 3.0. You can download it from http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/.

We’re releasing this a bit earlier in the cycle than we did with the Lr2 public beta, which means it’ll be a bit rougher around some edges. (As teammate Troy Gaul says, it’s a bit “more beta” than Lr2’s public beta was.) Anyone can use the Lr3 beta. It does not require an Lr2 serial number and it will work until April 30, 2010.

There’s been quite a lot of coverage already on the new release, and some favorites of mine are:

• Victoria Bampton (aka Lightroom Queen)’s What’s New in Lightroom Beta 3? I have to give her credit for teaching me a few things that were in the release. (We each tend to focus on our own little areas of the products and can sometimes miss what our colleagues down the hall – or, in my case, across the country – have been doing.)
• Scott Kelby’s Top Ten New Features in Lightroom Beta 3. I especially like this one since I had a hand in the new import (his #1 item) and had a major role in the Publish feature (his #2 item).
• Sean McCormack has the “Missing Post,” which is a very detailed walkthrough of new features.
• Rob Sylan’s My Take on Lightroom 3 Beta.
• Steven Shankland posted an article on CNET with another very detailed walkthrough of what’s new.

And, now that I’m writing this up, I see that our product manager Tom Hogarty has posted a roundup on the Lightroom Journal, listing these articles and more.