Ysarex wrote:
... . So the difference between processing and editing is how long you wait to do it?
Joe
Of course not. You are missing the point.
I don't feel that the terms "editing" and "processing" are synonymous.
I make the distinction that you can't actually
edit something until you are looking at it. That necessarily happens after the image is
processed to create a JPEG in the camera or to a raster image on your computer.
That means that a JPEG SOOC has not yet been edited, just processed from raw. What makes it faithful to the original scene is not that it is visually superior. It's just that no human intervention has taken place to add anything to the image or remove anything from it. It still represents the truth, warts and all.
As burkphoto just stated, "To me, editing means cropping, retouching, masking, layering, blurring/sharpening, adding text and graphics... in other words, altering the visual information significantly beyond reality." I would not include a particular type of retouching - removing spots caused by dust on the sensor. They were not part of the scene.
I do not feel that changing the processing steps in your camera or on your computer that affect the color balance, tonality, brightness, contrast, etc., to be editing.
Other things that might fall somewhere in between such as a B&W conversion, fixing vignetting, lens aberrations, etc.
You may not agree and that's OK. We don't need to reach a consensus.