the wall in the bacground is perfect already. That's a brusmap right not a texture ? Just the light on the left needs more work (IMHO) why's that those radial shades ?

Yes, that is a brushmap on the wall. I grabbed it off of some wall down in DC last week. I think it was the FDR Memorial. It has a bad seam that's not terribly noticeable in this shot. I'll fix it as soon as I learn how to use PSP. The light on the left is the standard venetian blind shader. I'm not that displeased with it here for the purpose it's supposed to serve at this stage. I was a little bothered by the highlight it caused on the lower left of the vase, but it was "naturally" cast through the blinds so it's "real". I may tint it blue since this appears to be a night scene.There's a wierd stair stepping artifact that's evident in the shadow on the vase that I have to figure out. The surface attributes on the table and the vase still need work. I'll probably tighten those up before I start trying to add stuff. There's absolutely no specularity on the wall yet. It may not add much be we'll see. What bothers you about the light? Thanks for the comment! Stuart

if you have the render time you can likely get rid of that "stairstepping" with soft shadows set to defaults on the vase light,unless of course,that's the venetian light,which may cause complications..be a fair render time tho...great image by the way....keep 'em comin bobbystahr

Thanks for the comments! After a great deal of headscratching and experimentation, the cause of the stairstepping was found to be the object's fault. Fracturing the affected area plus a healthy dose of smoothing seems to have greatly reduced the problem.