Sava, no-one disputing whether the 03 pic was altered or not. It should be
obvious to all that it was. The point you have missed is this: though un-altered high quality pic's are readily available for close-ups of the 03 Hulk,
none are as yet available for 08.
As such there is
no true level playing field: the best we can do for now is try and find the best
middle ground when comparing the two, and if that means degrading the quality of an 03 pic, then so be it - the alternative, displaying only a high quality 03 shot against this blurry 08 one, would be showing a rather blatant bias to the 03 version.
Now regarding what was changed: fair enough EB could have used a more appropriate pic that does not require as much brightening or color adjustment - the famous 03 close up (one of the best shots in the film after the change with Talbot) would be my choice, but for the purposes of comparing both
designs I
don't see that there was anything to get bent out of shape over at all.
Anyhow, I think this probably a better comparison for now (changes to the 03 shot are brightening & blurring it):
Once we have the 08 Hulk close up in high quality we can have a far more accurate comparison. Until then, this is about as good as we can get.