So I figured out the quality issue! Hurray! Unfortunately it's with the source image I am using as the back ground.

Originally I factored the blurry pictures to at least one of these 3 factors: over stretched image when attempted to use a simple image as an environment map (like in DireWolf pic), bad scaling (like in Kodiak pic) or because a possible loss of quality when re-saving as JPG.

I countered all of these things, but it is still blurry! So half way through this render I look at the image at its "actual" size and it's just a blurry shot! Doh!

I even was using it as my desktop, but resized, you can't tell the fact it is grainy and blurry. My girlfriend took this as one of her first picture after getting her new camera. Unfortunately she wasn't prepared and was just using crummy auto settings. Tomorrow we are going to go on some photo runs (provided the weather holds out) and I should produce some cool stuff from that!

I edited the render to make it blend with the grainy photo more by adding noise and doing some blurring.

SuperNova by Shadow
Original photo by Lisa Rose ([link])

Click download for 1680x1050