SamTherapy, you stated your case eloquently. It's refreshing to see this eternal question posed and answered in the spirit of "here's what I like and why" instead of "postwork is cheating" or some such provocative assertion. I enjoy postwork, I wish I were better at it. Give me ToxicAngel's skillset now, please, or David Ho's. In recent exercises I've backed off from glow-y, hyper-saturated treatments in favor of simply correcting rendering errors, adjusting bits of hue and value, sharpening small areas when appropriate. I've temporarily disallowed myself the use of plug-in filters, and have tried to make minimal use of Photoshop's defaults, which has forced me to learn more about the default tools. They're quite powerful once you start getting past the beginner level (which I'm only barely graduating from.) I'll return to the fancy effects once I'm convinced I don't need to rely on them like I did as a postwork newbie. I respect the "in camera" approach and do that too sometimes, especially when playing with new figure or texture acquisitions. It's a great exercise in the ways that SamTherapy described. I find it frustrating, for example, when people claim that Poser's lights "suck." They may not be as advanced as in other high-end apps, but even in good old P4, with a little sweat and patience, you can achieve eye-popping or figure-enhancing effects. Just ditch those inadequate light sets that come with Poser. :-) I think the trick with either postwork or no-postwork, if you want to improve, is to experiment as much as possible with the tools at hand, not to rely overmuch on plug-ins, pre-fab poses, other peoples' light sets, etc. Perhaps that's a bit overstated ... I learned a lot by studying Traveler's light sets. :-)