To digitally enhance a photo or not...

One of the most common questions I get regarding my images is... Did you enhance this in Photoshop.

The answer is yes if you count Colour balance, Cropping, dust removal, vibrance, curves, contrast, sharpening etc.
Professional and serious photographers shoot in RAW rather than JPEG, why?...
When you take a shot with your point & shoot in Jpeg or similar, you get that fantastic shot with beautiful colours, it is sharp and ready for print without digitally enhancing...or do you?
Jpeg's are compressed files with limited image data, you have taken the shot the camera has picked a colour temperature, saturated the colours, sharpened, increased contrast, boosted clarity and all those things that finishes of an image. The camera has chosen how to enhance your image for you and taken away that creative process.
When you shoot in RAW you get maximum information and no adjustments. It is up to the photographer to adjust the image to fit his or her vision.
It is important to a photographer to have full control from the moment they take the shot right through to the final print. Even to the point the monitor they view images on are adjusted and calibrated to show a true representation of what the print will look like. Monitors you get with your laptop or desktop are generally not calibrated for photos, they are far too bright and the colour balance is usually way off.
There are "purists" out there that believe you should take an image and not touch it, that way it hasn't been enhanced. I say if you are using digital the camera is doing it for you, it would be purer to do it yourself. If shooting with film, the choice of film and the chemical process changes the way an image will look, so you are manipulating chemically instead of digitally.
Photos have been manipulated or enhanced since the beginning of photography.
While I think adjusting your image is a necessary process, it can easily be overdone. In my images I try to represent what I saw and re-create the feeling of being there and get it right in camera using filters as much as possible.

Please excuse my grammar and spelling but I think you get my point... :)