Up until I saw Lance Mindheim's current stuff and the european group with the modular HO switching district, I didn't think anyone was using photo-textures properly.
With photo papers, your level of perceived detail on, for instance a brick wall, just shot up exponentially. How do you balance that with the rest of the scene on a layout? How do you park a DPM brick building next to one of these Clever Models structures and not have it look like half your painting is watercolor impressionistic and the other half is photorealistic oils?
Here's a shot from Lance that is pretty dang good:
Lance is coming about the closest to blending the technique with traditional methods but may not quite be there yet either. He's using styrene for corrugated metal buildings because the photo textures don't quite work for them, but he hasn't yet put enough weathering or detail into the corrugated metal to match the concrete it's parked next to.
Here's an example where the pilasters stick out a bit because they're too perfect compared to all the subtle photo-texture of the rest of the walls:
And here's that perfect metal siding next to lots of concrete walls with subtle photo-texture:
Now, maybe it's still in progress. But if you're thinking about photo-texture, then it's a completely new medium to be using for a layout and will have to transfer into all aspects of your layout to be able to pull it off right. All the patches and spills and oil splutters that Lance is incorporating into his streets is a step toward that goal. And it needs to happen on *every* surface.
