The site Techpir8 linked is distrosea, which lets you test Linux distros in a browser window (the Linux distros run on distrosea’s servers). No need for Ventoy.

Dual boot sucks because Windows likes to overwrite partitions critical to booting Linux without warning.

You could use Virtual Machine Manager (GUI frontend for QEMU/KVM, the most performant VM software on Linux). Here is a good guide on how to optimize the settings for a Windows 11 guest. I’ve used this guide to get SolidWorks, a CAD program, to work decent, so I assume other professional programs like Lightroom will run well too.