The precision of image synthesis techniques for rendering naturalistic scenes often works contrary to the realism of the everyday world. Pristine, crystalline, uniform and perfect may describe the most idealized computer images: the surfaces are smooth, neat and crisp in appearance. Efforts to produce realism have recently focused on light and the interaction of light with surfaces. The radiosity methods have shown that proper treatment of light is often critical to the proper visual effect in an image. Even the best of these images is nearly surrealistic in its precision, and thus belies its synthetic origins.