Color Photographs ... Enhanced!!

From time to time I come across shops that feature large-format color photographic prints having dramatic views and striking colors.  Apparently there is a fairly strong market for such images.

In some cases those color schemes are not what I've ever seen in nature.  Are my eyes failing me?  Or were the original photos digitally enhanced?

Offhand, I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure there was some enhancing going on.  Check out my experiment below.

Gallery

The first two examples are by Peter Lik.  I've seen this one in his stores.  The subject is Manarola in Cinque Terre, Italy.  The buildings seem brighter than I think they should be, and the foliage more green. The sea seems more placid and blue than I would expect.

Here again the foliage green in the foreground strikes me as being a bit false.  The lighting on the clouds seems on the strong side, though I have seen such colors for Hawaiian sunsets.

Photo from an unknown source via lebisca.com.  Colors look exaggerated.

Now for my experiment.  This is an iPhone photo I took recently on the grounds of the Waikoloa Beach Marriott on Hawaii's Big Island.

I moved it to my iMac, selected it for Preview, and went to Adjust Color in the Tools menu.  Then I moved the Saturation bar to the extreme and made a few small adjustments to some other controls to achieve the result in the above image.  It seems similar to the kind of likely enhancements shown in the first three images.