We've been trialing Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Beta 3.0 since its release a couple of weeks back and it continues to impress. Lightroom 3.0 Beta has some really cool features which allow you to easily enhance your images in record time. 

One of the features which I'm really impressed with (which has been in Lightroom for a while now) is the gradient tool. This tool makes it very easy to add extra mood to your images, leveraging the power of non-destructive editing and the inherent quality of RAW images.

By using this tool it is possible to add mood and drama to skies in post. It can be particularly useful for adding detail to skies when it would have been impossible to use a traditional ND grad filter - when using Nikon's excellent 14-24mm lens for example. That lens' bulbous front element and lack of filter thread makes it nigh on impossible to use filters such as ND grads. As a result you either have to take several images and merge them to create an HDR image, or manually comp the images in post. 

There may still be some times when you need to merge several shots together to capture the dynamic range of a scene, but the grad tool in Lightroom means it won't be as often.

Here's an example from a recent location shoot where I wanted to capture the drama in the sky. Tweaking the sky in post and making use of Lightroom 3.0 Beta's grad tool made it a breeze.