"But, what's a public beta, you ask? It's very clever actually. What it means is that anyone can download LR4 for the next while (maybe a couple of months). No cost, no need to have owned a previous version of Lightroom. Then, when the commercial version of LR4 ships your public beta version will cease to

function. You'll have two choices at that point. You can purchase or upgrade and then have a full perpetual working copy, or simply walk away saying no thanks.

The system does provide Adobe with a vast number of people to find small last minute bugs (it is a very complex program, with support for hundreds of different cameras, and numerous platforms), but more importantly it seeds the program into the marketplace for tens of thousands of new users, curious as to what it is and how it works. Believe me – there are very few people, who once they have spent any time discovering the depth of Lightroom, turn their backs on it."