Lightroom 4 Beta Initial Reactions

Question

First: Congratulations to the team for the proposed changes.
Thanks also to the beautiful Julieanne Kost who, once again, has made such an excellent video series. She makes a difficult method of presentation look both simple and smooth - unlike many of the UTube videos. I am never sure whether the occasional errors are not deliberate to reassure and teach those, like myself, who are less adept. It certainly works for me.
I like the new Develop module layout and logic, particularly the adjustment brush new features. It is very helpful to reduce noise in the specific areas whiche one has just lightened. The added selection control within the histogram is welcome.
I would buy Lightroom 4 purely for the brighten facility in the Print module. I use Spyder software to co-ordinate my screens and printer profiles but have NEVER been able to produce prints that are not darkened, despite profile editing. I have always had to arificially lighten the pre-print photo. Now I apply +50 and bingo.
I am currently unsure about the soft proofing - more below.
Unfortunately there are serious snags in the beta program.
The Develop module is unstable, frequently unresponsive to keyboard, brush movements or slider changes. With two screens in use I get alternating black screens and history showing random non-selected actions. There is a slight improvement when using only one screen in that the black screens do not occur but blank ones do. Reaction can be painfully slow.
In soft proofing the Paper White border appears virulent yellow, while the 100% White is fine. I have never used soft proofing before and am therefore unsure of the benefits. I experimented with a few photos with some strange results. For instance a photo of a dandelion head with a range of yellows showed in printer profile, and slightly less marked in RGB, to be out of gamut until saturation had reduced all yellows to white. (An action known in the culinary world as blanching).
I have been involved with Lightroom since the first beta trials and am impressed as each new release gets better and better. I look forward to this one doing likewise.
IntelI7 980X 12 GB RAM ATI Raseon HD 5800 Win 7 64 bit

Answer 1

If the dandelion yellow has to be reduced to white to get them into gamut by adjusting the saturation it seems obvious that adjusting the hue rather than the saturation may be needed.  Sometimes a mix of both is required.
Roger