OK. Thought I would chime in here. About 10 years ago, I began applying my ten years of knowledge in Photoshop to doing Photo manipulations and paintings ala Rick Van Koert. It was really crude stuff, but I look at my images now and I thank goodness for that experience.

I've been really lucky to have worked in Photoshop since it came out, and when I found D|S , well, it made a HUGE difference in what I was able to achieve. I didn't have to rework all the models in an image to put the thing together. I didn't HAVE to redo the lighting, and I didn't HAVE to create my own reflections. I could leave the math up to the software and concentrate on the composition of the scene as opposed to those other issues.

Does that make me a bad artist, because I don't hand paint everything? Or because I don't use strictly 3D tools? No. It doesn't. It makes MY art more diverse than IT was. Notice I didn't talk about anyone else's art. That's because in the end, my challenge is to achieve my work the best way I know how. And I believe I am doing that.

As it sits, we have enough artists from more traditional and established mediums throwing the BS flag on us for using digital formats. Do we really need to segment ourselves and our acceptability that much further?