Wrong! Its just a screengrab. There is a world of difference between preparing for a screenshot before you take it and post-production once you have it.
Anyone who thinks you need a lot of post-production editing on Il2 Screenshots is seriously under-estimating how good this sim can look on the fly. I think it is still the best out there. With a decent graphics card and the range of new particle effects there is little to touch it.
If you pause the sim, have several cameras on site and move around your mouse in freelook, you can get a great shot. Sure, its prepared and planned, the point is its still a screengrab and does not go through a post-production process to alter the colour, shading, or add light-bloom, blur effects, chrono-resampling etc. The fact that a shot is balanced and framed nicely is just good camerawork!
Preparation - Not Post-Production.
Why does it even matter? Because a basically un-edited shot shows us our lovely Il2 in all its glory, and it can be spectacular. I am not interested in something that has been photo-shopped to oblivion and no longer represents what we started with. To me minimal editing would be OK to remove the speedbar, although it is quite easy to fly without it in the first place, and likewise do away with the HUD messages if you have them, no big deal.
Last time out we even had a discussion over whether the sim had to be Il2!!!!!!!!!!!!!WTF? Why not just grab some stuff off Airliners.net and be done with it?