> Quote - People have done photorealistic renders with p4.

with no photoshop? please post links, because the only P4 work i've ever seen that even vaguely approached photoreal involved a good deal of photoshop pre or postwork, especially for lighting, sss, proper shadows, eye reflections, anisotropic reflections, etc.  i'm curious.

besides which, my point isn't about someone else's skills, it's about my own.   or rather, the differential in quality, given one user.   given a pretty good proficiency at P4 (i've seen a lot worse P4 work than my best), the difference after 1 hour using P6 is, imho, huge.  just 1 hour.  and again, the differences in interface were so slight that i didn't experience any.  that isn't to say that they don't exist, but  my experience as an intermediate user was an absolutely seamless transition.

this is my current testing setup  (again, raw) with light shaders based on bagginsbill posts, IBL, and my own skin shader.   default V4, and texture by Maelwenn.  again, not the best ever.  but i couldn't even begin to approach any of the stuff i'm using to achieve realism with P4. no IBL to fake global illumination, no lights with proper inverse square falloff (thank you, bagginsbill), no SSS skin shader, no real reflections (i didn't touch the eye shader, but it's properly reflecting), and no ambient occlusion (material based, i never put it on lights anymore). 

frankly, i've been looking at higher end renderers to get true GI, SSS and caustics.

i'm not trying to argue what people should use.  just that there are legitimate reasons the newer versions are easier to use and get certain results. i'm a postwork fiend, and i still want more features, not less.  i've used the fake GI spotlight conglomerates in P4. i found IBL worlds easier to use and control.  frankly, D|S is an easier environment for skin shaders, because instead of a complicated setup,  i can just use true SSS.  more features don't necessarily make things harder. often, those features are much harder to fake than use.