But a photography contest is not a “take a picture with your camera” contest. Post processing dictates a decent portion of “photography” and it seems like the rules for this processing are a bit of a grey area. I personally hate where it has gotten to, as a photographer, but just pointing out my observations in the assessment.

Cheating is an emergent high order effect, not some ground rule of the universe. When 'cheating' becomes good enough it's just the cost of entry. Just look at the Olympics these days. A huge number of the people involved in different fields of it are doing all kinds of questionable medical procedures that are difficult to near impossible to detect at the time of competition.

Wouldn't be surprised if in a few decades that we have to X-ray the participants in hand competitions for robotic enhancements.