If I am following the gist of this conversation correctly, I remember seeing several pieces of "art" posted like in the original topic three or four years ago.  They had about a hundred comments along the lines of "OMG that's so great!" and "Great use of textures!"  when it was plain as the nose on your face (no pun intended) that they'd taken a photo of a real person and photoshopped a pair of posette eyes and other features onto it.  At the time I thought about marking up a copy of the artwork and posting it to show people what they were praising, but it seemed pointless.

The part that grieves me about such pieces is that the manipulation was done only to deceive people, and not to improve upon elements of the image.  The elements were added only to give the impression that it was a rendered piece.  Seawolf I see nothing wrong with your image, you used poser to improve your illustration, and the perceivable intent makes all the difference to me.

I hate the deception type of images, and it's pretty much why I stopped going to the gallery unless specific artists I like have posted something new.