Serious question, does a processed image count as 'real' or artifical?

I had this guy come into my shop last spring, and while I was trimming his doodle he noticed my laptop wallpaper of the Orion Nebula. He got real serious and said that stacking and stretching an image is basically making something up, that it's not what your eye would see. I told him I get that, because my raw single frames look like black with maybe a faint smudge - you can barely tell it's a nebula. But I also argued that the data is there in the raw files, you're just pulling out what the camera captured that your eyes can't resolve. He pushed back hard, saying that if you have to use software to bring out the color and detail, you're creating a fake picture. That conversation stuck with me because I still flip-flop on it. Some nights I process an image and feel like I'm cheating, other nights I think every published astro photo does some level of stretching. Has anyone else had this argument with a friend or customer, and where do you personally draw the line between 'revealing' and 'faking'?

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nora_campbell663mo ago

Honestly, is this really worth losing sleep over?

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valgibson3mo ago

Stop worrying so much about what other people think, @nora_campbell66. You're right, some stuff just isn't that serious. Pick your battles.

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