Oh god, good!! I'm not alone! >.< I thought the exact same thing when I looked at those pics – in fact, most of the time when I look at photomanips on the OOC comm/in character journals I can't help but cringe, because it's so obvious that they've been edited. I always wonder how they can really think the pix are all that great when it's obvious that it's been changed – I think that's why I prefer most of your manips, because you make them "painterly" so it doesn't look like you're trying to pass it off as an actual photo.

Actually, you can do some pretty decent stuff without a tablet – I've only started using mine in the past year or so. Before that I did everything with the trackpad :)