Interesting discussion... and a little depressing since the original poster gave up on this site so quickly. I too would be interested in seeing the "clear examples of photoshopping on models." As for me, the only thing I use photoshop for is to resize my pictures and make collages. The rest is a cheapo light box, daylight bulbs, and a printed photo background.
I have seen pictures where people are clearly gaming the votes. A model that's maybe a 5 or 6 is scoring a 9.8 with 1000 votes after one day, clearly the poster is doing something to rig the system. But, so what? If you're going to cheat the votes, you know what you've done and most of the rest of us do too. It's just sad. There are also people who vote 1's on figures that deserve 9's or 10's. Again, it's sad that they can't appreciate good work and what to drag down someone else's rating out of spite. But you get a community as large as CMON and there will also be people who do those sorts of things. I'm actually happy we don't have more of them. (Trystan, posting 6 pics of the same figure is also a pet peeve of mine... not cheating, but I'm not a fan of it)
As for the original poster's question (and anyone with the same question, since he's probably not reading this), keep in mind you can only vote in whole numbers. There are a lot of figures I'd like to give a 9.4 or an 8.7, etc. I'm forced to round up or down. As a result, you should not focus too much on differences of 0.6 or the like. Voting is not an exact science. What I think you should try to do is continue to post your work and see what scores you get on average. I think most of us who post regularly here have figures that get scores we think are too low. Maybe its the subject matter or I took bad pictures or I just don't see the flaws (I often have selective vision for my own work). But if I look at my 3 or 4 most recent scores and compare that with the 3 or 4 before that and then the 3 or 4 before that I start to see that things are improving.
Time also plays a role in how people vote. The standards are slowly creeping up. So a figure posted in 2006 that got a 9 might score much lower if posted today. So if you compare your model to others with the same score, check the date and see when those were posted.
Finally, keep in mind this is a site with an international audience and many of the best mini painters in the world. If you take your figures to your local gaming shop you might be a big fish in a small pond. Well, now you're in the freaking ocean. The original poster mentioned dakkadakka. It's a fine site, but my impression is it is more focused on gamers rather than painters. Their community and CMON's are going to have a different view on what is a 'good' paint job.
CMON has a lot of great people who are happy to offer advice and help people improve. If this is what you are looking for, please start a WIP thread in the forums or post in the Discuss Submissions section. The forum here is a much better place to get constructive criticism. You can still post in the main gallery, nothing wrong with that, but you'll get much better feedback if you also are active in the forums.
