There is quite a bit that may or may not go into a photo
once it's been uploaded to a computer.
I have often heard gawkers looking at images saying
the phrase, "Oh, that's Photoshopped!"
Usually in a negative connotation.
There is a big difference between Photoshopped and over-processed!
News Flash: Every photo that is digitally taken these
days is "photoshopped" regardless of what software
one may use. Ex. Lightroom, Aperture, iPhoto, etc...
This is no different from the days I was shooting
film in high school/college and processed the film canisters
of chemicals, took it into the "dark room" to an enlarger,
where I "dodged and burned." Layered negatives for a composite
and then dropped the paper in more chemicals to get my result.
Granted we have much more flexibility with
what we can manipulate through the means of
computers than we had through a dark room,
but that shouldn't necessarily mean that
everything is over-processed to the point of
where it doesn't look natural with the human eye.
The first image is straight from the camera.
I've laid out the actions I took to take this from what
I would call a "Point and Shoot" image to the final
image below it that makes it really pop and look the way
it did our natural human eye would see the scene.
Final Image
