Altering photos is dishonest, right? Well, that all depends on how (and why) you alter them. Consider the before and after set on the right. The top photo is the original. It's a nice photo, better than most of the photos that you see on the web, but it has flaws. We can make it better.

For one thing, the background is totally neutral. This was deliberate of course; for reasons of privacy, the lady pictured didn't want her living space to appear. So a neutral gray background was used. This lady wanted her photos to give a hint of her personality. She is quite interested in the arts. So she picked one of her favorite paintings and it was used as the background in the final version of the photo. If you know anything about photo compositing, note that the painting is visible through the sheer material of the shawl.

The background set, we look at the photo itself. First, there is a slight greenish cast to the lighting which we correct in Photoshop. Next, you'll note that there are a few odd hairs out of place at the top left of the ladies head. No problem - we simply remove them. A bit more of a problem were the stray hairs that are located on the right center of the models chest area. She felt that they were a bit distracting. Of course, the procedure for removing them was a bit more involved, since we didn't want to leave a hole in the lady's chest!

Thus, we obtain the finished photo. It is (I think you will agree) an improvement over the original photo, but is still an honest representation of the model's appearance.