Touching Up and Glorifying

There are all sorts of great photo editing programs out there, some of which are free and available to schmucks like me.  I struggle sometimes with the ethics of changing a photo, altering it so that it takes on colors, vibrancy, softness, etc. that aren't original to the photo.  I guess it's not an ethical violation unless I am selling the photo with the claim that it is unedited.   Moral dilemma solved!  Let's proceed.

Here are a couple before and after photos to demonstrate what can be done with a little computer sleight of hand.

I can't help but like the second one better.  Look how the blue jumps out at you!  The contrast between the egg and the pine needles is startling and eye catching.  Yet I have to admit, the top photo more accurately reflects what I saw, even though it seems like a pale foreshadowing of what it was meant to be.

Pretty much the same thing was done with this photo (which was taken by Ruth, by the way).  I bumped up the saturation so that the color of the leaves nearly burns against the cool, dark water.  Now is this falsifying or glorifying the photograph?   The Bible says that woman is the glory of the man, meaning that she takes what he does and makes it better, fills it out or adds to it.   It doesn't seem right to take a photo of what God created and then "glorify" it, as if He didn't make the world glorious enough.  But I like to think that perhaps what we see here on earth is but a pale shadow of what He has in store for us, the unedited photo, as it were.   When we see Him face to face, we'll see the glorified Jesus, the saturated God-Man.  Maybe even the leaves will seem like they are on fire.