Do you Guys ever retouch or enhance your photos after taking them?
Yes. Every shot I end up keeping and posting to my Flickr account will have had some work done to it.
The development process is as much a valid part of photography as the composition and shooting process and it always has been. Back in the days of film, especially B&W, people would develop their negatives in a specific way to create the image they wanted. The terms ‘dodging’ and ‘burning’ that are used in post production packages light Lightroom and Apperture, come from B&W film development and refer to lightening or darkening certain areas of the image to create the desired effect.
What has happened with digital photohraphy is that we have far more control over the creative process and can now create images that were never seen by the camera.
I know people who deride that process and while it’s not something I am interested in, it’s entirely up to you and is perfectly justified if the image you end up with pleases you and pleases others.
One thing to highlight is that shooting in RAW format, as opposed to JPEG (and for reference you’re almost certainly shooting in JPEG unless you’ve specifically chosen RAW) almost demands you do some PP. The RAW format captures a far greater range of information for things like colour, exposure, highlightls, shadows etc. The options you then have to decide how you want the image to look are much broader. JPEGs capture a lot less information either side of the ‘out of the camera’ result.
Everyone will have their own work flow. I tend to confine my adjustments to increasing the contrast (using an s-curve usually) which greatly enhances the vividness of the colour as well as the contrast, lifting shadows, lowering highlights, adding a vignette if it’s a portrait, maybe some sharpening but not usually much if at all, maybe a graduated filter or a conversion to B&W.
That all said, I know one (talented) photographer who eschews all shuch jiggery pokery and insists on only ever shooting JPEG and using out of the camera results. He’s a bit of a purist and has far more pedigree in film photography.