Thanks again to everyone who posted the great links in this thread. As you'll see, I still have quite a way to go in mastering IBLs, but at least I no longer feel *quite* so clueless, and my renders no longer look as if Jessi was sprayed with mud! I'm not ever going to get deeply enough into this to buy a mirror ball, etc, but for my purposes, I found I can get acceptable results by taking my background pic into Paint Shop Pro, distorting it to get something that matches the light-probe template, then doing a little bit of tweaking on the result. Thanks again!