2011 is long ago for technology, isn't it Jim? I guess all that could be done in a few clicks for a tenth the money now. Do you think you'll repeat something similar?
I think color management is a mess myself. Rendering intents are a farce. I don't see why a monitor with a 14 bit LUT shouldn't be delivered perfectly profiled, what would it cost 20 bucks? By whuppin up on it for quite a while and reading voraciously, including our forum friends Schewe and dd, I have got a path that makes sense for my equipment and the workflow/image path. I usually convert from RAW in Photoshop CS 5 to Pro Photo 16 bit tiff, make my tweaks, and print to my Epson using matte in perceptual with PS manages colors. Matches my sRGB screen well and is visually pleasing.
I'll be getting a Dell WG in about ten days, so I'll have to see if any appreciable changes need to be made to the process.
I have lots of image editors and RAW converters, and just added Lightroom. I was amazed to see that it opened with one of my RAWs in place, apparently with lens correction. I have an old Fuji EXR and a lot of the apps don't know from Fuji lenses. I don't really trust what I saw yet because I don't know LR, but it's encouraging. I usually use DxO Perspective for geometry when needed.
About the attitudes and ragging. Two stints in the military, 50 years in aerospace with at least two insane bosses, and 55 years of marriage, I know something about taking a hit. I remember one outfit where I was proposals manager and the boss said he wanted a full section of this big deal to be a description of the company capability, so I wrote up pages of all this glowing bullshit, bunch of pictures, all that jazz. Before it went out, he cut it all out and put in two sentences saying the company had all the necessary facilities and expertise required. This same nutcase fired the manager of the only department that was making money, and the poor guy had a heart attack and died. That's what happens when you internalize the values of the culture, as any Marxist could tell you. In my career I saw other capable men take their own lives when the company didn't recognize their ability. You just can't take things that seriously. I had one boss rate me average. I told him, no, you mean terrible, don't you, because average means you don't have to explain why to upper management and then I get to say something about you, you are the guy who couldn't get a capacitor bracket through a shake test after three weeks of redesigning.
Talk about taking a hit, the first time I flew with my first project pilot, he showed me how to bail out and said you have to go before I do or I can't get out. Then he he patted his sidearm and said, "You will leave, one way or the other".