I agree with most of what you said, ASF1nk.
But what you call a "simple edit" is because you're advaced with most of that.
Take into account the people who JUST began hacking. They know nothing of what their doing, and they have to go and learn gimp or photoshop. They make their first recolor and to them, it took a lot of effort and time because their new to it. They get that confidence and are proud enough of their hard work, they upload it.
This is a very good point. The kinds of people making what many consider to be "minor" changes to hacks are really new to this whole scene. To them, those changes aren't minor at all. they took a lot of learning and probably some trial and error. Plus, it probably took them a great deal of courage to actually upload their edit to the Vault.
Yeah, some people are probably doing this stuff to up their download count, but I'm willing to bet that not all of them all.