I'm so pleased to read you using DPP and its in-built presets, Paddy.
Once you get used to it, it's the easiest and simplest way of getting great results. Don't be shy to export the TIFFs into Photoshop or whatever other third party software you may want to use to polish or work on images. But, using DPP as the foundation of your Canon RAW files in my eyes is the absolute best starting point. If you do a search, you can read about my rants re: Adobe Camera RAW and LightRoom.
Big grin.
H