OnOne is now offering a free public preview of Perfect Layers, new software that can function as a standalone application or as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and (eventually) Apple Aperture. It brings to those applications much of the power of Photoshop's layers feature, including layer masks, blending modes, and adjustable opacity.

The preview is available for free download, but the plug-in functionality is only compatible with Lightroom at this point and not all features are implemented. The Aperture plug-in will be included when the full commercial release ships, which will be in mid-2011, OnOne says. Perfect Layers 1.0 will cost US$159.95 when it's released.