I spend several years planning a shot, learning my craft, learning my gear wandering the world and taking a top image.
I spend a afternoon, with no knowledge of my gear, no knowledge of composition, taking very poor shots then spending days in a computer to produce an image.
I enter both in a competition and the computer image wins. Therefore the computer me is the better photographer. So i give up travelling the world spend little time taking pics and spend lots of time on a computer.
I am a top photographer because i know how to use a Mac Book and Photoshop.
"How do you use this 1DX?"
"Er dont know"
"How do you adjust your focus point?"
"Er don't know"
"Tell me how do you work out composition?"
"Er dont know"
"So how come your a top photographer despite not knowing a thing about photography?"
"Im good on a computer"
Nice example to illustrate your point and a reasonable point it is too. However, it is so extreme as to be nonsensical. It would seem absurd that anyone with a high end camera, and if you mean a Canon 1DX when you stated "1DX", would not know/understand about their own camera, focus points, composition, etc. Someone who has deliberately shelled out a truck load of cash for a top line camera, tends to know what he/she is doing and will quickly come to grips with what it can do and how it does it. It is also a given that he/she will know/understand certain principles of and have a reasonable experience of photography. No one goes from being a non photographer one day to a Canikon 1DX/D4 owner the next (well, hardly anybody).
That said, what I think you're getting at is that certain people, who are better classed as "Artists" rather than straight photographers. These people tend take images as a working base from which to employ computer software on as an artistic tool. They are using the computer/software to create their vision of art. The method by which the initial image was captured/made is perhaps of secondary or lesser importance, much like a lump of clay that a potter starts out with before crafting a finished piece.
I think the important difference here is that people who use computers and software primarily for creating strong visual concepts and effects, are more artists in the truer sense of the word where instead of using brushes and paints, the camera and the computer have taken over to be used as mere tools. They create images that are other worldly or ethereal and usually bare little resemblance to representing any recognisable reality as conceived by people in general.
On the other hand, pure photographers see their 'art' as capturing a moment of reality as it was at the time of image capture. To this ethos, it is an anathema to start corrupting that image with computer software jiggery pokery. The skills involved in are pure photographic ones, that is, the technical side - Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO, etc and the photographic artistic side of "photographic seeing", lighting and composition, etc. The only post processing conscionable would be to correct small defects such as exposure level, reduce noise, etc, as opposed to out and out data manipulation to transform the image in to something very different from what was originally intended at time of image capture.
That's just my 2 cents worth.