thanks for all details, much appreciated.

In the meantime, let me come back to my statement that "in the render, the eyes made a weaker (less sharp, ...) impression that the facial skin" or something alike.

So I made a comparison with some photographs from the galleries - BBs render is in the middle. Postwork on all: rotation to set the eyes horizontally, scaling to align the pupils amongst all images, slight levels adjustment so all have the same black/white points.

My impression:

1. in all photographs and render as well, the eyes have about the same graphical quality.
   So since this thread is about eyes: they are good !!
2. but in the render, the skin is somewhat darker, sharper, and more detailed while in all photographs the skin - in colorvariation like freckles as well as structure variation (bump/displacement) - appears brighter and far less detailed. This seems to be due to a difference in lighting (much stronger, broad flashy in the photographs) and a stronger response of the skin to that light (more specular / reflective / scatter than in the render).

So the relative difference between eyes and skin as I flagged earlier still stands, but it's not in the eyes but in the skin instead, and IMO that's something to bear in mind when overall photorealsm is of interest.

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Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though