Well stealth1701, I have to agree with you if I look at this; http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=660967&Start=1&Sectionid=3&filter_genre_id=0&WhatsNew=Yes That's just way too much, so I can understand your concerns. It doesn't make it a fair competion for some of us, because let's be honest; for some the gallery is some kind of HEALTHY competion

I've never seen any pure Vue image that didn't need postwork. Sharpness, contrast and color corrections are just a few examples. I can live with that. Adding real skies to Vue images seems to be a new trend to get a higher ranking. The result is better indeed and we'll get some extra rankings. Now I have the choice to follow the same path, but will I happy with that? Something tells me that it's cheating and then above all cheating on myself. That makes me wonder where I'm going to draw the line. I mean, I can take a tropical forest and add that to the background, an alpa plane of an animal, one of a sky, some brush work in Photoshop to create fog, several flower brushes in Photoshop to stamp hundreds of flowers, etc. I'm quite good with Photoshop and postwork in general and I'm sure it will give me the rankings I want, but will I be happy with it? Nah, absolutely not. It will show me that I'm good in one area, but it will restrict me in other areas. When am I'm ever going to learn how to draw if I keep pasting all my life? I want to develop myself in as many areas as possible. Vue for me is nothing but a tool and one of these days I'm going to paint my own stuff, 100% mine. That's just my choice. Everybody is free to follow a different path.