> There’s nothing that happens when you adjust the contrast or white balance in editing software that the camera hasn’t done under the hood. The edited image isn’t “faker” then the original: they are different renditions of the same data.

Almost, but not quite? The camera works with more data than what's present in the JPG your image editing software sees.

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doodlesdev 21 hours ago | parent [-]

You can always edit the RAW files from the camera, which essentially means working with the same data the camera chip had to generate the JPEGs.

	▲	eru 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not quite. At the very least, the RAW file is a static file. Whereas your camera chip can make interactive decisions. In any case, RAW files aren't even all that raw. First, they are digitised. They often apply de-noising, digital conditioning (to take care of hot and dead pixels), lens correction. Some cameras even apply some lossy compression.