Thanks Rutra and Chud0121. I'm not using enviromental mapping or force reflection map. It's really odd because it only seems to show up in the material menu display ( the sphere ) but when the scene renders the reflections are there. I just makes it difficult to determine how much reflection there is without rendering.

If the basic image is, say, 8"x10" at 300 dpi your could increase it to 16"x20" at 300 dpi with almost no image degradation. With larger images (increasing to 32x40) you drop the resolution to, perhaps, 240 dpi and the quality is the same.