This photo is too modified!!!!
I've never had problems with criticism, even ferocious (welcome! They are the engine of creative growth), but these statements on a photo always leave the time they find.
I try to tell you my personal point of view on post-production.
There are genres of photography in which the shooter must step aside: scientific photography, the reproduction of works of art, a certain type of documentary and architectural photography are an example.
In any other photographic genre, the author's interpretation, in a more or less conscious way, comes into play in a relevant way.
Photography is not transposition of reality: a photographer chooses a fragment of reality and processes it, transforming it into an image. Even when the contribution of technology and post-production is minimal.
Think of all the choices you make even before shooting: how I compose the photograph, what I include and what I exclude; the focal length I use and how this affects the compression of the planes; what do I focus on; the choice of aperture and the impact on the depth of field; the times and if we will have wavy elements or all perfectly clear; the overall exposure of the scene. The time and weather conditions, the light in which you photograph yourself also impact what and how an image communicates.
The particular chain of choices that a photographer makes when taking a photograph is already the result of interpretation: of his taste, of his experience and training, of what he wants to tell and how.
Do I photograph in raw or in jpeg? In the first case, I will later dedicate myself to developing the digital negative. If I shoot in jpeg I choose to leave the development work to the camera, exactly as in the days of analog I chose a particular film. I shoot (or develop) in color or black and white? And the choice of black and white radically distances us from realism: reality, as human beings perceive it, is in color, indeed ... it is in a certain range of colors.
Photography has everything to do with the reality of the author of the shot.
In post-production you simply make other choices, those of photography development: cuts, exposure adjustments, tonal correction, contrasts, elimination of unnecessary details or disturbing elements, vignetting, white balance ...
There are photographic genres in which ethics must determine the amount of post-production allowed: reportage photography, documentary, nature, are some examples.
In any other genre, the boundaries of how much post-production is acceptable in a photograph is relative: it is exclusively determined by the author in the fullest of his artistic and vision freedom.
The only substantial principle is that post-production is done to the extent that it is functional to the shot and to what the author wants to communicate through it.