I agree to a point - and I do so with a blood alcohol level below .08 - but it occurs to me in reading the above that this has nothing really to do with Photoshop. I may be wrong, but the real gist of it is seems to be that you seem upset that people aren't following THE RULES(c). Me, I'm of the opinion that rules should never, ever enter into the world of art. God, how terribly boring would that be? As long as you're not a documentarian, then whatever you need to do to get the image you want, you do. If that means pushing ISO800 to EI25000 to crank the contrast to insane levels, cross-processing and sticking it in a slide mount or compositing 6 images together to make one then that's what you do (and that's what has been done for the past 100 years). Now, there is one thing I have to add to that; if you do manipulate the image beyond "normal" enhancement (meaning addition or subtraction of elements) then in my opinion you must not represent it as something it is not. -=>Donald