I’m making a cylindrical object and starting with a cylinder with 64 radial faces. I figured 64 radial faces with “set smooth” on would give the illusion of a perfectly smooth surface, but the smoothing between the faces isn’t pronounced enough and the edges are still somewhat apparent. I don’t want to go very far beyond 64; I’ve seen cylindrical models with 64 radial faces that look perfectly smooth. Is there any way to increase the effect of the smoothing between the faces?
You should get smooth object with half that amount or less, though I have noticed that there appears to be a shading error when rendering at times. You could use a subsurf modifier on a 16 sided cylinder making sure to add a couple of edge loops, one at top and one at bottom, activate set smooth, maybe set auto smooth at about 32 degrees or something and then you should have a perfectly smooth transition around the cylinder and a flat top and bottom with no shading errors.
Even if you don’t want to go this route, 16 sides with just set smooth should be enough except for at the top and bottom where you can see the sides are angular.
Thanks, I got it now. The problem was that I hadn’t added edge loops near the top and bottom; I had only creased the top and bottom.
Out of curiosity, would you recommend avoiding creases altogether?
I use creases in conjunction with the edge split modifier for great results quite often. or just to get the little extra sharpening at times. but I agree that more often then not edge creasing isn’t all that helpful, I think that it’s one of those “used only occasionally, but very helpful we you need it, tools.”
but I guess that depends a little on your modeling style, some would require it more or less then others.
Edge loops give you better control of the mesh over all by allowing you to control the curvature of a mesh around corners and which side of the edge gets the most curve based on where you put those loops. Creases as used in other software like in Blender do not transfer to other packages like geometry defined curvatures or hard edges in subsurfed/subpatched objects. Creases are kind of an internal cheat for smoothed objects, that can work in a few cases and very well in others, however I do prefer to use added edge loops for the control and transferability to other packages.
yeah, I don’t normally have to use any other direct polygon modeling applications, so cheating is just fine for me in that regard. 
If you are still new to modeling I would suggest always using edge loops like ajm said, it is a better practice in most all cases.