I believe all of the above photo's have been "edited/enhanced", JMHO, but take a close look.
I think you are right Steve ... let me elaborate why I think you are correct.
Photo Shopping, which is the term DS used, is used to refer to the introduction of elements ( objects, colors, etc) that were not present in the scene that was captured in the camera.
I think you are referring to "post-processing" (processing after the image was captured by the camera) which is what all photographers do when they process their pictures. If they don't do this, then you can be assured they are not a photographer (not that there is anything wrong with that).
Coincidentally, I am writing an article on this subject for a website of a photographer friend (backyardshots.com). I will outline a few facts on digital cameras and their resulting images that I will use for that article.
Any picture that comes out of a digital camera has been "edited/enhanced". Every picture that you have ever seen in a magazine, newspaper, on TV or on the Internet that was taken with a digital camera has been enhanced. The reason is that a raw picture out of a digital camera (even one that costs $25,000) is just a terrible picture.
As an example, refer to the picture of the bison that StevetheUPSguy posted in the thread "How's the view" ( which I like) has been edited and enhanced. Not how I would have enhanced but without a doubt "edited/enhanced".
I will take my best guess on the adjustments made for several of the used parameters.
I would say it has been sharpened by about 15% (it needs more), it has the saturation increased by about 13% (needs some selective saturation) , the blacks "shadows" have been increased by probably 3% (should have been at 9% or so in my opinion). It appears to have the mid-tones increased by 3 or 4 % to help bring out details in the image (definitely needs more). The contrast has been bumped up maybe 4 or 5 % but it needs more contrast which I normally will not do until I get the aforementioned settings right. Your white balance is off because the camera did not read it correctly ... it needs to be bumped up about 200 - 300 degrees Kelvin (the sky has too much cyan) to look more natural. This is probably the hardest thing for a digital camera to get right - in this case the sky along with blue in the mountains threw off the white balance.
All professionals use tools get the White Balance right before they take the picture or they do it in post-production. Most just leave the camera on Auto White Balance and then adjust in post production. They will use an 18% Gray card as a reference and then adjust using that as the reference color.
Bottom line, an engineer at the camera manufacturer made several "best guesses" for you as to how to best enhance your pictures, which is probably a good thing for the average picture taker. I would suggest you go into Menu and find "picture adjustment" (or something like that) and select Vivid or the one between Normal and Vivid for your camera to give you a more natural, vibrant image.
Every digital camera has a set of stored reference files used to apply parametric adjustments to the actual image that helps to make the image out of the camera look like the old film cameras.
Most cameras have at least a hundred stored images that are used for reference and some "professional" cameras will have as many as 8,000 reference images or more.
Wedding photographers in particular use these reference images because they have to process hundreds of pictures in 3 or 4 hours - "turn them around" is the industry expression.
There is an application in your camera that evaluates each image and based on variations in the image of colors, presence of sky, tonality and many other factors, selects a stored image that most closely matches the image and applies the parametric settings to the raw image to produce the jpg file you see in the rear screen and in the outputted file.
If you and DS would like for me to, I can post a picture in three different versions:
The First one will be straight out of the image file - neither of you have probably ever seen one and you don't need or want to. These images are very flat in tonality, not much color and not very sharp.
The Second one will be an enhanced image straight out of the camera which is enhanced using the "Normal" setting on a camera. Note: "Normal" will vary by camera and manufacturer as each engineer will adjust the image enhancements based on the sensor sensitivity, bleed over between pixels and even the lens characteristics as well as many other affecting components of the image concentration and capture.
The Third one will be one where I will take the raw image straight of the camera without any enhancements where I will try and recreate what my eyes and memory perceived the captured scene to be. Mine will always be better than the first and second images ... at least in my opinion and probably other experienced photographers.
