Someone looking over my shoulder as I retouched photos for a club website said the above. I enhance color on each photo, just below the level of garish. I hadn't thought anyone would do any differently.
I started out as most do, fixing red-eye and sharpening the blurries. Then I started to fix people's appearance. Why not get rid of under-eye shadows, add "lipstick" and "mascara", airbrush out acne, whiten teeth? Hey, that's better.
But now I go for aesthetic expression. I keep finding new ways to make colorful, cool images out of all those TV & movie photos I keep downloading.
I can draw, reasonably well. I just have NO patience. And I never learned to use color - not even color pencils.
I remember saying almost 20 years ago that computers weren't worth the trouble until they could work like magic. Back then computers were slow, clumsy and dull. But now; magic. And I like color. So my art looks like hallucinogenic Hollywood.
I think that's fun. I'll do this for a while. Until I learn to do something better.