Michiel953 wrote:

Hi Jones, of course. What I mean is the assumption that the camera matching profiles provided (in this case by LrC) have baked-in contrast, and that that would be detrimental to shadow and highlight recovery. That's certainly not what I'm experiencing.

My observations agree with this as well. That being, even though the profile may visually crush the blacks, once within the editing program they are recoverable to an equal degree regardless of the profile used.

My assumption is that it is similar to my audio editing program. Once an audio file is within the program, all processing and manipulation is carried out in a 32 bit float environment, effectively making the dynamic range huge and a non issue on both ends. Until the moment of export of course, at that stage it must be reigned in and becomes fixed within the limits of the chosen output format.

Regardless, if the image profile applied at import is one thing and then a corrective curve is subsequently applied, my feeling is that things can get a little lumpy and unnatural, the second curve being unlikely to compensate evenly. Maybe this will be desirable at times, it feels a bit hit or miss to me though, which is why I start with linear.