IMO, if you follow Blackhearted's advice on rendering you can't go wrong.  You will find his tutorial on rendering in almost all of his products.

I would also recommend forgetting all about depth mapped shadows.  I asked this forum some time ago about the advantages and I was told that the main reason is the render time.  That's true; raytraced shadows in an image take a hell of a lot longer.  But hey, they are at least reasonably accurate and they don't make as big of a hit on your RAM.  At least with raytraced shadows you get a reasonable approximation of how they would be in the real world but depth mapped shadows are a pathetic joke.

Also, you should save out as PNG, which has no compression.  If you save as JPG, then you need to be taken to see a big dog.

Coppula eam se non posit acceptera jocularum.

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