I now have C5 but when I render, the image vanishes, is there a way to get the image to stay there until I no longer need it?

Not sure what you mean here...

If you mean that when you do a render preview test in the scene room, yes, it collapses/disappears when you next do something. It's only a sneak preview. Personally I never use it. I do a lo-res render in the render room so I can switch back and forth between rooms because the render room image is written as a permanent image until you decide to overwrite it or not save it. On a mac it's faster than the scene preview as well.

It is faster on PC as well. I dont think the preview render is multithreaded, making it much slower.

No, I was in the render room, the image rendered, and once finished, instantly vanished.

And I didn't do anything - it just vanished.

I've just gone back to try again and - it's just like going to the doctors, now the rendered image is staying there - and I can't have rendered from anywhere except the render room, because I don't know how to.

Mind you, it's a totally unrealistic render, like looking through smudged glasses.  Rather like Bryce with the fog and haze on by default actually. 

Makes all the effort of getting to this point feel totally wasted.

Is this what you get with Carrara 5?  Is there no way to improve it?

I can't find anything anywhere to remove fog or haze.

well it sounds like that should not happen at all. It sounds like there might be something seriously wrong with your software. Carrara is quite a good renderer and only renders blurry stuff if you tell it to, so if your image is smudged and foggy, it is possible the software is corrupted and not rendering properly.

If there is nothing in your scene settings, lighting and objects that would cause this, I would uninstall, do a system check and then reinstall. If the problem is still there after that, it would be a good idea to post screen images of your scene and the render. That would give some idea of what you are getting.

Better yet Fran; could you do a screen capture (I do this all the time with a preview render) and post it here to see if there's anything obvious we can spot so we can help you? I wouldn't go to the trouble of uninstalling and re-installing before we do this if I were you.
 I've been very happy with Carrara, but it took a little while to come to terms with it. I can assure you that it has a very capable renderer.

Posting screen cap....

See what I mean?  Dusty, full of mist.

Turn on 'full raytracing', if you want nice reflections off the knife blade.
Anti-Aliasing 'Fast' is low quality (leaves much aliasing). That looks like about 1/2 your problem.
Also, you increase quality by changing the 'object accuracy' and 'shadow accuracy' settings (lower pixel = higher quality).
As always, there is a trade off between quality and rendertime.

I couldn't help but notice that in your second screengrab you still had not clicked the box marked Full Raytracing (Higher Quality) located at the left top under Renderer Photorealistic. A lot of times I'll also click the Sky Light under Global Illumination if it's an outddor pic.

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Nope, still looks misty to me.

Forgot to try the sky light, but I just tried it and it actually looks more flared out, even dustier - with that checked.

Image now added.

I was checking that out also.

I do not know if it makes much difference, but when you start a new scene, it asks if you want a small scene, a medium scene, or a large scene.  Is that relevant here?

Good thought UVDan, but Fran says she has C5 and the scene size only became an option in C6.

Thought No.2: I can't see anything obvious in your screen pics so try setting your render settings a bit higher, so anti alias is good, raytrace is full quality etc etc - just pump it all up. Then render at a much higher output - it makes quite a difference for single images - I normally do a test render at around 600px to get the idea, then a big render at around 2000px if I like the small one.

If that fails to improve things, make sure you haven't got anything in the scene settings turned on that shouldn't be, such as lighting effects or lens effects, and do the same check with the shaders, to make sure you're not looking at a lot of graininess that is actually in the objects shaders themselves, rather than the render. I think that makes sense???

BTW I just noticed that you have things like pixel accuracy set quite loose - If your shaders are grainy (quite clumpy patterns) and the pixel accuracy setting is low (as in fast 'n' dirty), the render quality won't be very nice because it will just skim over dark/light patches without nicely rendering the inbetween colours and tones. If you set the pixel accuracy to a smaller number, the render will achieve a better subtlety.

I've tried all the things you suggested and it looks pretty hopeless, no appreciable change that I can see.

I've therefore tried a checkerboard pattern on the slab under the knife, and if you look closely the more distant black square is mistier than the closer black square.  (I've saved the original render and then done another one so I could position the squares to check)

So is there some way to adjust the sky settings?  Are there any sky settings?  Maybe the mist is located there?

Or is it the material on the ground...?  Only the mist is affecting the checkerboard too...

If it's not possible to adjust the sky settings I'm thinking it's just not possible to get a decent render in Carrara at all...

My PC's hard drive has now melted, lost everything on it.  But!  I still have the files - since I save those to an external drive.  So now I'm back to the laptop while the PC's fixed.

Another thing, I also got the 100th issue of 3DWorld - with Carrara 5 Pro on it, do you think using that will make any difference?

(Haven't installed it yet, driving to uni tomorrow and have a deadline on Tuesday)

I'm also wondering if the misty look might be something to do with the material on the ground...?

If it's not the sky settings.

Oh so that's where the atmospherics (skies stuff) are located, can't look yet as Carrara3D Basics will not open the Carrara 5 standard file I saved - it'll have to wait until I get C5Pro installed - hopefully tomorrow.

The mist is everywhere - that ground surface is covered in it, so much so that you can hardly see it for mist, and even the checkerboard is slightly affected by it.

Fran, have you considered that it might not be mistiness, but  light reflections? Nearly everything reflects to some degree and looking at your checkerboard, the lightness towards the back looks more like it's catching the light.

It might be an idea to post the actual Carrara file on this thread so some of the pro's can take a look at the scene settings. Carrara is a very good renderer - almost photographic - so mistiness is much more likely to be from the way you have the general atmosphere and lighting set up than a problem with Carrara. And as for C5pro, yes, give it a try and then go up to C6 pro :)

Sorry, no money so can't afford C6.

I'll try to post the file after I've had a look at it in C5Pro.