There's a difference between "catching colors", and using photoshop to manipulate colors. The grainy nature of the blue indicates to me that this photo is more of the later than the former. Just check out the full sized version of the photo and check out how processed the colors are (including the "green" bucket).

I guess I just consider that to be "cheating" in a way. The composition, on the other hand, is not a product of digital shortcutting, and is quite nice in this shot.

I'm with Brian. I've worked with both BW and color film before digital. With BW film if you wanted certain colors to pop (as grayscale tones, of course), you'd select a colored filter to shoot with that enhanced those colors. You could also make strategic choices with film type. Then, in the darkroom, you could adjust global contrast,brightness, accutance, grain, etc with your choice of paper, choice of developer for both paper and film, time of development, etc. You could dodge and burn to make selected areas brighter or darker. You could fool around with techniques such as solarization to achieve effects we can now get with photoshop filters.

Although few photographers processed their own color film, there was (and is) great variability between processing labs, with some labs producing much more saturated and contrasty pics on average than others. And, of course, you could get HUGE differences in saturation and color with different film stocks. Compare, e.g. Fuji NPH to Fuji Velvia or Agfa Ultra.

Even with digital w/o postprocessing, the camera itself does considerable processing on JPEGs, and most cameras let you adjust contrast and saturation.

So, de gustibus non disputandum est, and all, but I think this whole "you cheated by using post-processing" thing is ill considered.

Well that's why I said "cheating" instead of cheating. (it's not a contest, so there's no possibility of genuine cheating).

I think the difference between the time-honored lab tricks and photoshop is the skill involved. It takes a lot of effort, time, and wasted prints to achieve something in the darkroom that takes five minutes on photoshop.

Using photoshop is "cheating" in the same sense that using a auto-tune is "cheating". It accomplishes something impressive with much less time and talent than would otherwise be required.

[sorry if this is like triple posted, I kept getting the internal service error]

I have to say I don't think that necessarily helped your argument. The modifications to the photo seem to go far beyond 'touching up'. Unless I'm missing something, those clouds came out of nowhere.

It certainly looks nice, no doubt, but in the context of the POTD, I have to side with the OP.