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There is no right or wrong in much of the discussion in this thread; it falls into the area of personal preference. There are those who think it okay for their photos to look over-processed, and those who prefer that the picture appear not to have been processed at all.
What we tend to forget is that even in the days of film the pictures were processed. The main difference between then and now lies in who did the processing. In the days of film, unless you were fortunate enough to have your own lab and equipment, you handed the film in somewhere and trusted the lab technicians to give you prints that accurately reflected the scene you tried to capture. The way the photos were processed, and even the choice of paper used for prints, could dramatically alter the results. Most times the lab guys got it right, sometimes they didn't.
Furthermore, some photographers were better at taking pictures, others were better at lab work.
Today we all have to process our own pictures. Those who excel at the lab work, so to speak, will get better and more natural-looking photos after processing than those who excel at shooting and tend to rely more on plug-ins and automated procedures during the processing stage.
The technology is seductive, and we tend to forget that it is a tool to serve us, and not the other way round.
I also suspect that most of the photographers here would fare quite well with jool's "back-to-basics" test; after you've been taking pics for a while you get a feel for what the exposure should be. The exposure meter helps you fine-tune things, but if you know what you're doing you can usually manage quite well without one.
Just my devalued 2 cents,
Les
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