Am I A Photographic Cheat?

Luminous Landscape

The dishonesty/deception argument is, I believe, based on the view that image editing distorts reality.  We pretty-up the picture to make it more eye-catching.  The finished product doesn’t “really look like” the scene that was in front of the camera.  The breaking-the-rules argument is based on the related idea that the role of the photographer – especially a landscape photographer – is to present subject matter exactly as it really looked.