How much editing is justified?

@loccdor - a question, just because I'm curious. Why didn't you step between the two cars in the original image to get closer to what you wanted? Were you on a bike?

Finally we have one vote for “abomination”. Anyone want to claim that vote?

nikos79 said:

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"If a photo is very good I think it will stand out no matter the editing (unless it is obviously too dark, overexposed or sth)"
Of course it can be improved (and should be improved imo) with a careful editing (as in your picture).

But honestly I didn't need the editing in the first place to understand that it was a good picture

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If I got this right, basically you are saying a good photo should jump off the contact sheet and hit you in the eye.

No amount of editing is going to save a poorly conceived image. It might make it a little more pleasing to look at, though. And some creative editing might even successfully turn the source material into a whole new image not originally realized.

But at what point does the performance* itself become editing? Or does it ever? Or does it always? Or does editing start with act of seeing?

I will do all the 'editing' needed to create the image I want, be it zero or a ton.

* The classic "the negative is the score..." thing.

loccdor said:

Example where a heavy edit was planned in advance. I only had a 28mm lens. I noticed that the car had been hand-painted in the same color as the house/fence posts of the people who owned it. I wanted to highlight that point of interest and also wanted to correct the perspective from my vantage point as well as remove extraneous elements.

Before:

View attachment 407626

After:

View attachment 407627

Real life it was more striking because the shades of blue were indistinguishable. I think because I used the very saturated Velvia it separated the tones. I do wish they had stayed more similar to one another in this case.

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Nice catch! For me, cropping down to the top of the house to get rid of a lot of that blue sky lets my eyes connect and equate the blue of the car and the posts easier. You nicely cropped out most of the competing baby blue on the left side.