Quote - nruddock, I agree fully with the second part of your post.  "a part with a real photo is going to stand out and/or highlight the lack of realism in the remaining image" This is the reason 100% perfect Poser photorealism is not a goal worth striving for as it doesn't go well with the rest of the render anyway.

Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien -- the perfect is the enemy of the good. I think it's attributed to Voltaire?

Anyway, of course it's a goal worth striving for. It's just a goal that people sometimes prematurely declare to have been achieved.

Almost every prop/figure uses a photographic texture. Some truly brilliant minds can conjure up procedurals that are rather amazing, but let's get real. Suggesting that people shouldn't use photographic textures in renders is akin to saying that artists shouldn't use photographic references for their paintings. It's just some arbitrary standard and no one is obliged to accept it.

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PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.