While that's true I just don't feel it's a photo anymore, it may as well be a CGI render because it doesn't actually exist in reality. Not saying there isn't skill involved but things like cloning big things (small stuff I can live with) out of photos just seems like loosing the integrity of the photo without jumping the gap into the creativity of creating art. IMO obviously.
While I agree to an extent I think it really depends on whether you want to take a photo and have it look like the scene or take a photo and have it look like art.
I have two processing "styles" as such, the first is essentially just touching up (bit of contrast, sharp, colour adjust) which leaves the photo essentially as it came out of camera, good for those shots to put in your photo album as such. I then have a second "style" where anything goes, a bit of HDR (not the nasty extreme stuff, more understated), changes in contrast, colour, brightness, B&W, all sorts, aimed at making the photo turn from a nice snapshot to "art".
The former is good for documentary shots (such as garden birds) or holiday photos and TBH if you have good equipment, a rudimentary knowledge of how to use a camera and a reasonable "eye" then they are generally pretty easy to take (obviously there are exceptions but most garden bird shots come into this category). To be very good they obviously take some skill but there are so many non skillful ones out there.
The latter is good for anything and IMO turns you from someone who takes snapshots with your expensive camera to a true "artist".If you've spent 20 minutes trying to get the right angle, exposure length etc, after choosing the right time of day and location then it's a little silly to not then get the best image out of your "negative" (ie RAW shot). With these sort of shots merging exposures, cloning and deleting parts of the image, changing colour to B&W (B&W with digital is pretty heavy PP IMO), excessive colour and contrast changes are all fair game. I see it as just painting with a photograph.
Neither way is the right way as such (I do both regularly) but neither is wrong either and I think those that don't use post processing are essentially in the dark ages, it's like not using filters or AF or IS.