it would look better if you created a custom hdri map of an area like that on a sunny day, then placed the sphere on the plane in a box with holes in thoes two areas.  other than that you might want to use a scene that has more objects in the middle so you can get a more percise idea of where the shadows would be where the sphere is.  there are also some radiosity problems, the bottom of the ball would be blacker and the top should be lighter. 

another important thing is the angle of the shadows on the ball, try moving the area lights a little left of the table 

adobe photoshop cs2

i dont remember what i used, it was so long ago, in general i like jpeg better, yah but maybe thats just what my program did by accident.  but bmp are also smaller

yet another thing i love about yafray, its one of the few renderers for blender that take advantage of dual core and higher processors which are the only next generation of processors.  the only problem with yafray's use of multiple processors is that it does not take advantage of them during raytracing, caustics, or any other steps other than refinement and antialiasing

yafray.  i pretty much always use yafray. when i dont use yafray i use indigo, however indigo takes way to long.  i have tried lightflow and have never liked the process or results and blender's internal engine just cant do as much and isnt as good

true i am not arguing that if you set everything consistently it will not be more realistic, just that these settings provide an easy realistic solution.  the problem with setting everything realisticly is that you have to take realworld size into acount.  the settings i have provided conduct a realistic simulation for the art hobbiest which is fairly consistent throught the realworld sizes i have tried and other settings i have tried.  however if you are a physics major, i would not recomend my tutorial for the settings, just for setting up the simulation. a physics major might want to calculate the settings himself

i have tested many values and a value of 120 acts the most realistic. it might be a bug, but thats how it works.  changing the end frame value can cause odd things to happen such as the first 3 frames holding the hole animation.  the settings i have provided act the most realistic.

Attached Link: liquids

well thats a good one, but blender is still far away from being anywhere near the end of 3ds max and maya, or even lightwave.  thoes programs are already to widly used commercialy in the industry.  when a commercial institution uses a program, they end up endorsing it by forcing students to learn it in order to get jobs. plus the idea that thoes expensive program useres are an elite few gives them comfort

there's my take

for lighting effects there is a little secret it took me a long time to learn.  when using yafray and wanting caustics, do not use a photon emiter, rather, use an area light.  turn on yafray GI to full, enable cache and photons, and turn refinement down to .001

howbout "blender a completely free profesional 3d suite"

if you want to use refractions and caustics or any material setting involving complex rendering modes, i would recoment yafray as it is amazingly simple to use.  however, there are amazingly few tutorials for learning how to use caustics and the few that there are are outdated confusing.  i am trying to find the time this summer to write some basic tutorials on caustics and liquids based on what knowledge i have gathered or figured out during the year.  caustics however was the most elusive of all rendering methods

sweet dude. the only beta that i have ever tested and hated was vista beta, which sucked.