While attempting to clean-up my collection of graphics related papers and such, I re stumbled across “Uncharted 2: HDR Lighting at GDC 2010”.
It’s nice as it gives an easy to read overview (if you will) of rendering in gamma vs. linear space, tone-mapping (high dynamic range -> displayable) and (screen space) ambient occlusion. So it you might find it interesting even if you’re not interested in implementing any of this stuff.
Interesting!
I guess I should point out that at least the part of gamma vs. linear is worth reading if you’re doing any OpenGL at all…so don’t let the HDR and/or SSAO bits scare you off.
I eat HDR and SSAO for breakfast! It’s the reason for using gamma at all that I don’t understand, though this slide cleared it up a bit.
My comment was targeting a slight wide audience 
Don’t recall if this has more or less info, but: http://filmicgames.com/archives/299
Using gamma space textures are good for precision reasons. This way you get more precision where you need it.(for dark values)
Using gamma space for monitors is different story. More reading. http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch24.html
About SSAO I find these papers really interesting.
http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/papers/SAOHPG12/
http://kayru.org/articles/dssdo/
SAO give better performance with really high quality with same inputs requirments than uncharted ssao.
On other hand dssdo is propably only feasible way to get some shadows for all those deferred points lights that you can throw nowadays.