Ivo,
I get you.
But, for all intents and purposes, the prettiness that DPP does to the files is exactly what I expect to see once an image is captured.
I do understand that there is so much more underlying what is presented in DPP.
And, I totally agree with you that this is fine for terrestrial photography, where we don't necessarily care about calibration or linearity.
Re: noise reduction; this can be disabled in the noise reduction tab. By default, DPP applies an appropriate amount of luminance and chrominance noise reduction to each image, depending on the ISO it was shot at, and, what camera was used. This can be disabled in the camera, or modified in DPP itself.
I guess my main issue is, how to tell which one (decoder) is correct, when they all produce differing output?
Appreciate your post.
Cheers.
H