i don't think the post working is the issue.  after all, it's easier to have an individual brush style than create an individualized render from someone else's content.  i think it's that one type of postwork reigns.  frankly, i'm not impressed by the work of royo, and i've thought boris vallejo's work was drek since i was 13.  so people copying their styles doesn't appeal to me. 

people get rewarded for doing the same old romantic or fey or sf stuff in the same old styles by popularity. i don't think that postwork should be put down any more than poser should be.  it's not the tools, it's the artists using them.

i've seen brilliant work that was painted digitally, and if somone used poser as a base for reference, i think that's excellent.  it really strikes me how many cgsociety people hate poser but then give critiques of purely painted works like "your proportions are off,"  or  "you didn't handle that foreshortening quite right," or "the lighting is inconsistent."  helping get that stuff right is what poser was for in the first place.    but then, maybe they looked at the hot 20 and had the same problems with it that we had, and decided that if that was the best of poser, that it wasn't a very good program.   where here the opposite is done, and we decide the fault is in the postworking programs and techniques that work for them are the problem.