Alright, so where to start :) a) We'll start at the easy end: Please post thumbnails! b)Seriously though, moving on to the image, you've cranked up the roughness and the reflectivity (or the direct sunlight reflecting, or the sunlight diffuse, not sure which) on the water, and it looks slightly overexposed and er, back to the tinfoil thing again. The colour is beautiful tho. b)The terrain. The background mountains are good. The rest, how you say, er, it would be a favour if "someone up set us the bomb". Basically the prob is the mountain, its sorta overly simple, and no surface can disguise that. the foreground stuff is the same in this regard. c) The surface. It is, er, ungood. Needs bout 5 more layers. Download SOPack and learn to use it. d)Lighting. Well the effect is the backlighting, and if you made this a wide angle shot, killed the foreground land and fixed the mountain, it could yet come off all right. However, as is, it is too bright and is doing bad things to your clouds. e)The clouds are boring, fix them. Skies are easy. So overall, good start, it just need fixing, see point d. That wraps this mess up, Seekerr