ortega said:
in order to creat stunning images in the digital darkroom (photoshop)
you need a good image in the first place
as they say "garbage in, garbage out"
I agree with Ortega at this point.
Some people (especially most of Anti-Photoshop People) think it is so easy to use Photoshop to make WOW images out of lousy photographs, and its NOT true.
Majority of the images we see here on Clubsnap are processed in Photoshop. And we can say not all of them can make us wow. You need a good photograph firstly, to edit in photoshop.
And afterall, its all the imagination of the photographer. If I see a pimple on the model's face, I will remove it. If I want to change the color of her dress, I will change it. As long as its something I want to do, I will. But for this, I still need a nice image.
You can take a look at
http://www.deviantart.com/view/23983687/ for an example. I shoot that image with almost the same imagination in my mind. And I processed it. If someone sends me a lousy photo to do the same effects, it may not be as good as this one, or I may have to spend a lot more time on it. Sometimes before you shoot, sometimes, just after looking at the LCD screen, I make decisions how I would edit this image. And trust me, Photoshop is not easy.