@loganlamar, thanks for your opinion.
the feeling I am trying to convey with the image
capture a particular feeling or moment
I guess if the motive for taking a picture is to capture the feeling or emotion in a particular scene, editing out distractions or adding certain effects for enhancement would be fine.
I like to keep my images looking fairly realistic.
I think this is a good point to keep in mind when editing pictures.
Thanks again for your helpful response.