Sometimes images need a little TLC.. a little post work, to bring them back to waht you saw. Like this one, a rainy shot in Jamaica last week:

That is what it looked like. But the camera shot, taken in a hurry from a moving bus, was not quite right:

Underexposed, so the colour does not show. So I made some adjustments to bring it back:

A graduated filter at the top; then the “basic” adjustments: Exposure up; then clarity and saturation up. That way, the image looks the way it looked to me. Shoot RAW, and you can do these adjustments without any noticeable quality loss.

It is OK to change an image. “Pixels were born to be punished”, as Frederic Van Johnson says. But in general, I tend to restrict changes to a minimum; and to bring back images to what they looked like.

If you do alter images to create an effect, which I do sometimes too, then I advise you to keep it simple, and to realize that fashion comes and goes, while style stays, so keep the original!