Mactador,
I think it was a good idea to start this thread and I also wish that some people would share their techniques a little more openly.
You only have to surf a bit in the gallery to convince yourself that some people use photo heavily - sometimes other members even find the photos used on the net and post them in the thread - the threadstarter just acted as if he did that all by himself … it happens - I’d say - at least once a week. It is often discovered in portrait paintings.
One thing that always - perhaps because I’m a photographer - gives the pieces away is that the poster didn’t bother to retouch unwanted elements in the background - EVEN a photographer would do that nowadays ! 20 % of a table lamp on the border … which artist would do that ?? Why not incorporate the lamp entirely or at least half of it ? The feet are cut off at the border … somebody more skillfull would at least have added some more canvas and have reinvented the missing parts of the feet !
Many more or less newbies use photos and it’s very obvious, because some parts of the image looks almost photorealistic and others are really badly painted - how come someone is so good at painting a face and all the rest just looks like crap ? James, if you surf around in the gallery a little, you must have noticed ! What bothers me the most about it is that there are always some people there to say : “incredible work - it looks so real !” Yes of course it does, because half of it is more or less the photo as it was from the beginning ! And James again, I have seen some people here - mostly newbies or people who are not that good at painting - saying that they didn’t use any photo when it was OBVIOUS that they did. You have to ask yourself sometimes : how could they get the proportions so right and then render SO badly ?
In some fields use of photo seems more accepted than in other as far as I understand : 3D textures and matte painting for example. I think that a lot of people use photo to some degree in their paintings. If a newbie or somebody with no real talent isn’t able to cover it up, more skillfull people would be able.
Unfortunately some people are very dishonest about their procedures, although I do agree with Kraal that why should an artist give all his secrets away if he doesn’t really want to ? It’s his right. Right now I’m thinking of someone who posts these days here : he always have very photorealistic faces in his images, but the rest just doesn’t follow … to me it’s obvious that his faces simply are photos with very little repainting.
Personally, I’m not at all against using photos and I do myself use overlay of textures in my images because I’m too lazy to paint it all by hand. Of course it still needs some tweaking and stuff - it would be foolish to think that you can just find a photo and cut and paste and that’s it !
Why spend a week painting some textures if you can obtain the effect you want in an hour or two ? I mean, we ARE working with digital media. I always try to see if I can’t find a quick and easy way to obtain what I want to. It’s not always possible and I have to go the hard way in some areas of my images. I am not a professional graphics artist - I have another profession and kids, so I don’t really have the time to learn everything “the hard way” - perhaps when I get retired in 15 years time 
I also like to play a lot around with different filters - mostly free ones found on the net - unfortunately I often find them more interesting than the ones I paid for … I often do this in the start to get some sort of atmosphere and then I work on from there. My first initial sketches and color blocking mostly look like something a four year old kid would be able to do :sad:
But little by little I get it in the right direction. I’m definately not at all as good at drawing as someone like James for example - perhaps I should use pencil and paper more. Sometimes I try to find a reference photo that looks somewhat like my painting and put it on a layer above my painting to check if the anatomy isn’t completely off.
Most of the filters do though disappear little by little as my image advances - they were only there to help me get it going and inspire me.
I use the “real” photographer tools a lot in my images. Selective color correction, hue and saturation, etc. All the color correction stuff. I even use dodge and burn, but sparcely. I do a lot of corrections with feathered selections - 20 - 30 even 50 or more to get an invisible border where the corrections were applied. Many people would perhaps just repaint those areas, but I think it’s so much easier just to apply a correction in PS. I don’t use layers very much by the way - I find that working directly on the canvas gives a more harmonious feel to the painting, so every time I’m quite satisfied - I flatten and save as version N° 46 …
OK, that was some of my small and humble “secrets”. I hope some other people will follow and thanks again for starting this thread Mactador:thumbsup:
)
But you did say in your original post “theres no way on earth u used ONLY Photoshop and Wacom to do that” which I (and perhaps others) took differently to how you intended. It sounded more like an accusation of deception thats all 
