Been trying to increase the realism on trees, in particular playing with leaf textures. I put in some background and a simple sky to give the image a bit more 'feel' The trees are (left to right):- 1)Default Apple Tree 2)Procedural Texture used, with World Space rather then Object Space set. 3) Hand painted image texture used 4) as 3) but using World SPace rather then Parametric mapped. Which do you guys think is most realistic? (I'm not interested in trunks/ shape just the leaf texture bit...) I kind of like 4 because I can make dark/light or even browned areas on the tree.

#2 looks good to me........

I can't tell.

All the leaves look overly large.

Not sure if this will help, but when I do trees now I duplicate the one,then twist it slightly and move a tad behind.Then I texture the trees with my digital photos using the image edit for trunk and leaves.Also the material edit must also be set with the same image.Darken it in the DTE.Use parametric.on leaves. Not much of a tutorialist but maybe you get the drift.

Oh ....I also use different images for each tree.

I use the proceedural textures, but I tweek them a bit (getting rid of transparency and ambience, muting the colors and so forth. I've had very good luck with tweeked base bryce textures. What I've noticed the most problems with the tree generator is in the trunk and branch creation. It's very hard to get realistic trees just using basic settings, and God forbid you try to do a conifer!

I've made perfect conifers once, for a scene of a hunting cabin, I'll try to dig it up and post a screenshot.... Gog, my stupid monitor here at work is too dark, when I get home I'll try and give you a fair analysis of your textures...

Recently I have made a few trees and plants with real leaves and flowers snipped off and scanned in a flat bed scanner- several looked quite realistic

Two and four are the best looking. Because they are not symmetrical.