Folks have always altered or manipulated photographs for various reasons. Filters, infra-red film, cross-processing have all been used for effects and lots of darkroom techniques such as dodging and burning (every B+W landscape must have a 'moody' sky) have moved the image away from a 'straight' record shot.
With digital you can recreate many of the old photographic effects and add plenty of new ones and you don't even need a photograph to start with. Some of the Photoshop effects filters such as 'twirl' or 'glowing edges' etc., probably come into the frequently quoted category of 'use it once to see what it can do and then never use it again!' but provided an image looks good in its own right and doesn't just say: 'look what this filter will do' then it's valid in the 'digital art' category as far as I can see.
You don't just need to use an effect filter to alter an image, some of the regular 'photographic' filters will alter an image quite markedly - try the unsharp mask at its maximum setting of 500% and 250 pixels radius for instance!
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