russelray wrote:
The software makes no difference. To prove that to myself, as well as members of the three camera clubs I belong to, I took different RAW files to different software, i.e., Corel Draw, Paintshop Pro, Photo-Paint, Photoshop, Lightroom Photomatix, etc. In every single case, the DNG file was flatter than the CR2 file. That tells me that it's not the software, it's the RAW file.
The CR2 file includes both the sensor data and an embedded jpeg. I think the different programs were showing you the jpeg, not the raw sensor data with post processing applied. If you take a picture using raw+jpeg, and they look identical, it's because you are seeing the embedded jpeg in the CR2 file.