The “raw” and unedited photo can be just as or even more unrealistic than the edited one though. Photographs can drop a lot of the perspective, feeling and col

The “raw” and unedited photo can be just as or even more unrealistic than the edited one though. Photographs can drop a lot of the perspective, feeling and colour you experience when you’re there. When you take a picture of a slope on a mountain for example (on a ski piste for example), it always looks much less impressive and steep on a phone camera. Same with colours. You can be watching an amazing scene in the mountains, but when you take a photo with most cameras, the colours are more dull, and it just looks flatter. If a filter enhances it and makes it feel as vibrant as the real life view, I’d argue you are making it more realistic. The main message I get from OP’s post is precisely that there is no “real unfiltered / unedited image”, you’re always imperfectly capturing something your eyes see, but with a different balance of colours, different detector sensitivity to a real eye etc… and some degree of postprocessing is always required make it match what you see in real life.