Photo editing = cheating?

You did a good job.

But yeah, I did a whole project on it this year, I think photo editing is part of photography now. I don't think it should be classed as cheating, it depends what type of photography you're talking about. Some kind of advertisement for a house which has been edited to become unrecognisable isn't right. But in terms of art photography, (like the horse is?), I think editing is perfectly acceptable to an extent. I mean, in the end what is art? Personally I think it's just something which appeals to your senses, and as editing techniques have got more advanced and easier to use, photography's just become closer to painting in terms of the end product being exactly what the photography wants it to look like, which is in effect what a painter does. And painting is art. So no, who's to say editing a photo is 'cheating'? what are you cheating at?
And anyway, photo editing has been a massive part of dark room photography for decades now.

I don't you can cheat in photography. It's just enhancing the image to get rid of flaws that no one wants to see.

The fact is photomanipulation has been around since photography's invention, photographers would change the negative by drawing on it the same way someone would Photoshop an image today. It could also be argued that taking a photo in the first place is already idealising reality, you're cropping out elements and choosing what to include, that's a manipulation of reality in itself.

And as for creating the 'perfect reality', the most expensive photograph in the world is a constructed one, so if that's not proof of the acceptance of photomanipulation then I don't know what is.

In my opinion, if you can manage beautiful, captivating shots with proper art elements and properties integrated, and it's purist, then you should be revered over a photo manipulator. However, just because you edit photos doesn't mean you should be discredited. Sometimes you can see a wonderful image, but it's blanketed behind something ugly. When that happens, you just need to shed the blanket.

Why is it better to have it unedited? It's still art if it's edited or not. I see no issue with it at all. The artist should be allowed to get their art to portray their vision in any way they desire.

Gumdrop Fields

See that's where I disagree. You are insinuating that all editing is to fix mistakes and errors in the photo. It is possible that it is being edited to distort certain features, or to change the photo in some way that isn't considered normal, and hence can't be called "fixing". Experimental photography and editing is creating a different form of art that isn't directly comparable to purist photography. Saying one is "better" than the other isn't a just comparison.

Gumdrop Fields

Euphoric, of course I don't find that true. Sometimes editing a photo can make it look infinitely better, even when it was just fine as it was before. Actually, I just edited a photo to give to my girlfriend tomorrow. Nothing was wrong with it, but it looks far better now. However, if you can manage to make an amazing picture with just the shot, no manipulation involved, I would consider that to have taken more skill than tweaking the results later.