I recently shot sexy photos of a friend, both to increase my experience as well as to provide a favor to her. When done, I showed some other photos to her that I was in the process of editing. I also asked if she wanted a dump of camera photos now or to wait for the editing to be done. Having seen the difference between the camera version and the edited version, she chose to wait. She also pointed out that she, as well as many other women would focus on the bad photos and not even see the good ones we captured. Speaking of which, we did get several great photos of her.
Here are a pair of photos (of a different friend) showing the camera version and the edited version:
I adjusted the white balance and exposure, I removed a few skin blemishes, and I removed a couple of minor wrinkles. Note that my camera is recording in RAW mode, so I have a lot of data to work with to produce a good photo. And, I’m expressing a bias here, but it never hurts when the subject is a beautiful young woman.
So, one (of many) lessons I learned from this photo shoot was that I need to edit photos and not just give them out, in spite of doing my best to get it right in the camera in the first place.
This is psychology: people will focus on problems (in photos, in writings, in ideas) and will not pay as much attention to the good parts, so yes, it is best to not present raw data to someone unless they specifically request it!