When I read your initial post
@Thatchapthere my first reaction was "how can something over the lens of the camera make images look 'cartoonish'..." - then of course it dawned upon me that you were probably referring to the abominations that are "Instagram Filters" and their ilk... (other image manipulation presets of varying degrees of over-blown-ness are available should you wish to create picures that look just like everyone else that uses the same filters)
Based on that assumption - that by "filtering" you mean applying a preset filter to your own capture in order to "improve" it in some way - do I feel that it's cheating? No. I actually feel that what it is doing is selling the image and yourself short, by not giving the image the degree of care and attention it deserves in post-production and instead slapping someone elses "one size fits all" manipulation of Contrast, Colour Balance, Saturation, Sharpening et.al. - Instead, I'd suggest that you go back to first principles...
1) before taking the shot, ask yourself what you want to "say" with the end image...
2) try and pre-visualise the end result before even raising your camera to your eye (or placing it on the tripod)
3) Get the composition right (not necessarily by adherance to "the rules", but by understanding what works and what doesn't, in the context of #1 in this list)
4) Get the exposure right (a relatively simple process in this era of highly automated cameras) - a lot of hobby photographers like to think that this is the difficult part, but it's simply balancing exposure time, aperture and iso - and as most cameras can actually let you set one of the three and they'll sort the other 2 for you, it really, really isn't difficult)
5) if it's appropriate for the shot (i.e. landscapes or other stuff that's going nowhere) WAIT FOR THE LIGHT. Without the kind of light you want for #1 and #2, you're making it hard/impossible for yourself.
6) take the shot, get it home and look at it. Decide if it meets your criteria for #1 and #2. If not, THEN consider pulling it into some form of post processing software like Lightroom, Photoshop (elements or the more expensive full versions) or one of many, many other flavours of software - they don't have to be expensive - indeed there's a very powerful image editing software that's completely free called
Gimp . They're powerful tools, and can do many, many things to and for your images. Initially, you'll probably over-process the shots - most people do. My advice is always keep your original files as well as the edits - because 6 months along the line, you'll be bored, and re-visit the first stuff you did, and with a few months of experience you'll do a re-edit that'll knock the spots off the first attempt.
Don't get hung up on "straight out of camera is best" - it's always best practice to get things as right as you can in camera obviously - what's missed at the capture stage can't be put back by post processing - BUT - processing pictures after they were exposed is nothing new, most of the regularly used tools in Photoshop are actually digital derivations of techniques that were used in on film in the old fashioned "wet" processing days...
I'll leave you with a couple of Quotations...
“You don't take a photograph, you make it.”
“You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography
all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”
“The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance.”
– Ansel Adams
