Some of my most 'realistic' results have been obtained via the agency of Photoshop.....not in raw renders.  I know that some purists don't think that's the proper way to do things -- but hey: it works for me.  If it gets the results that I want, then it's all good.  Frankly, I'd rather spend 5 minutes in Photoshop than 5 hours tweaking things in 3D, trying to get just the right light setup.

Then again: programs like Vue & various highend apps can crank out beautiful renders without a lot of the near-endless tweaking that certain other ahem programs seem to require......

But hey: it's not a problem, anyway.  Running the dirty render laundry through Photoshop is a wonderful & a quick cure for all rendering ills.  Your colors can come out brighter & your whites whiter.  But to each their own........if something else works for others, then that's all good, too.

Something To Do At 3:00AM