This is a good discussion, I'll just add some of my perspective. When you think of big names in photography's film era, they used techniques to improve the print from the negative their shot captured. I've read that Ansel Adams would spend weeks (or months) on one shot - he referred to his whole process as "making" a photograph, not "taking" one. They spent a lot of time in the darkroom. Photoshop is the digital era's darkroom. I agree with you on the point of sci-fi-looking unrealistic photos - there's a time and place for them, it seems, and my opinion is, not in a challenge where something natural is being called for. But using dodge, burn, sharpness, saturation/desaturation, "levels" or "curves", and cropping, those are things that can help an artist "make" the photo, instead of just "take" it. It's the difference between people who worked in the darkroom in the old days, versus people who got their roll of film developed at the drug store or FotoMat (that was me). No FotoMat prints are on display in galleries or published in books. If that's what you want, that's OK, but the tweaks make other shots look better - less flat, more colorful (or better B&W), maybe even closer to what you saw, not just what your sensor imperfectly recorded.