Having done wet process manipulation to the extent that the original capture is no longer recognizable (and have done the same in PS) making the issue of manipulation older than I am, I fail to see the problem with it.

 

In each medium I am better than some at doing it and not as good as others, image manipulation spans over 100 years.

 

To put it in my very basic terms, PS or whatever you use is just the 21st centaury way of doing something that is age old, many people go to work in a car and don’t walk or ride a cycle, a purist may say that this is not how we were meant to travel and that we should walk. Do any of you walk to work and leave the car at home? Not many I will bet.

 

99% of what I shoot is pretty much as shot except a levels/curves tweak, one might say that a simple conversion to a monochromatic image is manipulation, this is of course a radical manipulation from the original image.

 

Going a step backward I also use coloured gel filters in the studio or a polarizer for landscapes this is manipulation before the fact (prework) to get the effect that I want, that too is manipulating an image.

 

This topic will most likely be discussed at length long after I am gone and forgotten.

 

Using an ultra wide lens or super tele lens also manipulates an image by distortion or compression.

 

However you view manipulation the topic is very subjective and non exhaustive.

 

It wont change how people will work.

They wouldn’t have made the cane if you weren’t meant to break the rules