You're ignoring simple facts. The numerical light levels recorded in a digital image do not produce linear luminance changes on a monitor. All digital media devices know this. Cameras gamma correct, printers gamma correct, etc. It's not a limitation of the monitor - it's intentional. A gamma of 2.2 gives more fine-grained control of light levels. If it used a gamma of 1 (linear) then many degrees of brightness would be wasted on bright things, and very few levels of darker things would be available. This would create obvious banding in gradients, particularly in shadow areas.

So - it's not for artistic reasons. You can work around it. It's for professional reasons. You want to use real light levels, and you do not want to be messing around with hacks and compensations. Everything should just work.

Tone mapping is a different subject. Totally.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)