If you're not touching your files at all you're almost certainly not seeing anything in print/screen how you saw it with your eyes. There is a whole industry of colour management dedicated to helping that very process (amongst others), and not touching a single thing in post is not the same thing. Not to mention the wild variety of screen settings, papers, inks, etc.
If we're talking about digital, and you're shooting RAW (which you should be
), they are deliberately neutral to capture the maximum amount of information, giving the user the greatest possible amount of leeway in determing the photos feel and tone when
developing the RAW file. Just as we chose different films for their colour/tonal properties.
We need to get out of this post processing = impure stigma some people seem to be clinging onto. If anyone here has any experience in colour/b&w darkroom printing they will know how much you can alter the print from the same negative, even on a very basic level (I think a lot of this negativity is born of the digital age).
If people don't like larger manipulations (lots of healing, removing items, composites, etc) then that's of course entirely upto them, a matter of taste. The only problem is sometimes it feels like these comments somehow imply inferiority to these processes, as if they're really easy to do well. Good post-production is as much an art form in itself!
