Comparison of the one-point PDF from N-body simulations and from maps generated by shifted log-normal modelling. Top panel: Distributions of the shifted log-normally generated maps (solid lines) and N-body simulations (dashed lines) for the unsmoothed case (in green) and at a smoothing angle of θ = 5 arcmin, θ = 12 arcmin, and at θ = 20 arcmin, as labelled. Bottom panel: Relative residuals of the log-normal PDF with respect to the N-body simulation.