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Lightroom 4 just released as a BETA.
Opened up this topic to collect any thoughts / comments / experiences etc.
No surprises that it now includes Soft Proofing so I guess this will receive the most comments on the various Lightroom forums, but what about the new features in the Local Adjustments and Channel selection in the Curve Adjustment
How useful will those be ?
Will have a more detailed look this evening, but in the meantime "Over To You" 
I think what you mention is certainly of interest. Less so things like being able to create a book and pop it off direct to Blurb (I assume Blurb financed that bit ). My main issue is that it would seem you can only upgrade if you own a 64 bit machine. I don't know if that is only for the beta version but it will disappoint many if so.
First impressions are good.
It seems faster than LR3.6 on my 64 bit Win 7 machine.
The White / Black / exposure / contrast sliders are different from before but seem to produce good results.
Soft proofing and printing seem to work well together (although I always do a print preview anyway with my R3000).
No obvious bugs yet.
Want to see how the improved video handling works at some point as LR3 was very limited
Just had to have a quick play.
1) Develop Module > Lens Corrections
Remove Chromatic Aberrations.
I cannot see any justification for NOT having this ticked .. it does far better automatic adjustments than my eye tweaking the Red / Cyan & Blue / Yellow sliders in LR 3
In fact, having this option ticked will go into my Import Preset.
2) The new controls in Basic Panel for Exposure, Whites, Shadows etc. are giving me lovely crisp / clean whites and showing subtle differences between creams / whites with easier and finer control.
Apparently these features have had some development and now have more advanced "Tone Mapping" / "Content Aware" algorithms.
3) Soft Proofing is a bit of a mystery to me at the moment. OK, it shows you out of gamut colours.. but what does one do about it, if anything ?
Further experiments tonight !
Quote: 3) Soft Proofing is a bit of a mystery to me at the moment. OK, it shows you out of gamut colours.. but what does one do about it, if anything ?
I've not had a chance to download and play yet but in the telephone briefing we had yesterday I saw that the gamut appeared to be reduced using the eyedropper. So the idea is you switch on softproofing, select the output profile you intend using and adjust editing controls until the out of gamut areas (indicated in red) disappear.
Quote: Remove Chromatic Aberrations.
I cannot see any justification for NOT having this ticked .. it does far better automatic adjustments than my eye tweaking the Red / Cyan & Blue / Yellow sliders in LR 3
In fact, having this option ticked will go into my Import Preset.
I've had that set as default on my import preset for a while. What's new in LR4 with it Jeff?
The highlights / shadows sounds good, I could never see much difference in LR3 between shadows fill and the brightness slider (the fill affected far more than the shadow area). Similarly with recovery in LR3 I found you often get better results lowering exposure then increasing brightness, sometimes with recovery you get colour shifts ( I read about that tip from one of the Lightroom development team somewhere).
Are LR3 presets compatible with LR4? ( LR2 wasn't compatible with LR3).
Quote: Remove Chromatic Aberrations. I cannot see any justification for NOT having this ticked
Remember software makes mistakes and what could actually be detailed reflections in a diamond or a swimming pool or whatever might be cloned out because the program mistakes them for CA. I'd wait til I saw real ones in the image and then ask for them to be removed.
Ah I see. Must be like the one in DPP (also lens-based from Canon labs' database)
Quote: select the output profile you intend using and adjust editing controls until the out of gamut areas (indicated in red) disappear.
But which editing controls ?
I am very new to the concept of soft proofing, so I need to swat up on it in more depth !
Quote: I've had that set as default on my import preset for a while. What's new in LR4 with it Jeff?
I assume LR3 supports your camera / lenses and therefore has a profile for automatic correction.
LR3 does not support my camera / lenses so have had to do manual adjustments with the Red / Cyan & Blue / Yellow sliders.
Now with LR 4 Beta ticking the box does the adjustments for me, automatically 
Jeff, Julieanne Kost has already made a few videos re LR4 including softproofing. I think it will give you a good idea of how to use it.
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