To Tweak Or Not to Tweak.......

I am discovering that some photos I take can be totally altered

and in my opinion look better than the original.

This is a very subjective thing of course and I know there are 'purists' who feel that this altering

of a photo takes it into a different realm of photographic work.

What do you think about altering photos and playing around with

photo-editing software programs?

Here is what an original from this series looked like:

For me, I think both have their merits. It depends on what one wants to create.