Image trickery has not been invented with digital, only simplified. People messed with images all the time before. Because of our current lack of darkroom, we must edit images. I'm not a cloning advocate (unless a client asks for retouching on a portrait). But exposure techniques such as HDR are totally legitimate. So are dodging and burning, and all kinds of other exposure adjustments that derive from film. Someone who is a heavy user of full-manual film cameras might say that shooting with an autofocus, autometering digital body is cheating. It's all in perspective. Changing the content of an image is wrong (cloning, etc.) unless it's for skin in portraits. Photoshop is just another creative technique. The HDRs that run totally wild with contrast and light-smoothing are art, not photographs. A well done HDR looks like an impossibly exposed photograph to the trained eye. I agree that my HDR is a little on the fake side. It was somewhat rushed, and therefore not as good as I'd like. But really. One who drastically changes their image in photoshop and then claims it's real is a cheater. But someone who makes a natural image with a few exposure/color tweaks is not. Just my opinion.
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