There are more arguments about photo editing and processing than there are photos in this world. Ok, that might be a slight exaggeration. But still, it is an argument that has become especially prominent with the rise of digital photography due to the easy manipulatability of photographs.

Some people believe you can do whatever you want to a photo, it is all about art. At the opposite side of the spectrum are the purists - who believe that the only changes you are allowed to make are basic exposure, white balance and sharpening. I am more specific in my beliefs.

If you ask me this question, I would say that it depends on the purpose of the photograph. If it is to document something formally like a crime scene, biology, photojournalism etc., then it is paramount that any adjustments be limited to those that improve the quality of the image and improve the correlation between it and the real world. Take note that I did NOT say it should be limited to basic exposure. My reasoning can be understood by realising that when you press the shutter button on any camera, especially a digital camera, before that image is stored on the memory card it had undergone a huge amount of processing. Some of these processing steps are:

(paraphrased)

Client: Would you please restore a file I accidentally deleted? I know you can only restore to yesterday's date, but we did a lot of work today and need it to be current.
Me: Doh!

I received an SMS message (text message for those Americans amongst you) this morning at 07:04 from my wireless service provider, proclaiming to have given me a free 1GB of data per month. All I had to do was to click the link to enable it.

Firstly I was suspicious at the time the message was sent. My carrier has never sent me an SMS message that early. Secondly, the number did not match anything I associate with them - but that is a bit tenuous as they sometimes use weird internal numbers. The URL in the message (partly blocked out) did seem reasonable but also not exactly what I thought it should be.

 java.lang.ClassCastException: java.lang.Integer cannot be cast to java.lang.Long

In specific, all I want to do is use a JSTL variable as index to a variable someMap as follows:

Map<Integer, SomeObject> someMap = new HashMap<>();
...
<c:forEach begin="0" end="10" var="level">
    <c:out value="${someMap[level]}" />
</c:forEach>