Serious question, does post-processing make astrophotography less 'real'?

I was talking to this guy at a star party in Flagstaff last month who insisted that any editing beyond basic crop is basically cheating. He said stacking and stretching takes away from what you actually see through the eyepiece. But then I showed him my raw frames of the Orion Nebula vs the final image and he admitted the details were invisible without processing. So where's the line? Do you think a photo has to match the naked eye view to be authentic, or is bringing out hidden data just part of the craft? Has anyone else had this argument?

2 comments

2 Comments

grant56910d ago

Ha! So the gatekeepers are out in full force again, huh?

joseph_west5910d ago

My final stack looks way better than anything my eyeballs could ever see, so I call it a win.