I just uploaded two images in the gallery. Butterfly and Butterfly 2. In the first one, I used the picture as material on the single sided square and got a wonderful smooth render, but the lighting sucked. In the second one I just used the picture as background picture and the lighting is wonderful but it is pretty grainy. Does anyone have any idea how I can retain the wonderful bright colors and lighting but still achieve a nice smooth render? Thanks for any help.

When you use a picture for a background, set up a large square like a background screen and apply the picture to that. Poser's backgrounds retain the dpi of the preview window if you want a higher dpi; you have to apply it as a texture on a square.

You're kidding! I never knew that. How annoying. I've done the "background screen" thing with a square primitive, but any shadows cast on it made it look very much like a fake backdrop. Is there some setting you can use to prevent that? Or do you just have to put it far enough back so that no shadows can reach it?

If you are using P5 with your background square or sphere prop you can plug the background image into the ambient channel, set the the ambient value to 1.0 and then set the diffuse and specular channels and values to black or zero. This way the background won't pick up any shadows or any other artifacts due to the scene lighting, and all the illumination will come from the image itself. Bill

In P5 the blurry textures on the bacground happen much less. I think it's happened to me once. If you're really stumped, use your pic as background, set up your scene, render over black-- not the background-- as a tiff. Save to PSP or Photoshop and put the background in there. Poser will save your render with an alpha channel that will make it easy. I did Afternoon Gossip in my gallery that way. Emily

williamsheil's idea basically works in p4 as well. Object Color black, Texture 100%, Ambient color white, everything else black or zero.

I always use a plane prop (square primative)when using a background pic in PP. In my opinion it looks better and is more versatile. As for the shadow problem, I can usally can work that out buy selectively turning them off or adjusting.

Also (though I'm not 100% sure) If you turn Cast Shadow off the background square, will it then TAKE shadows? I seem to remember it won't.

No, it will still take shadows; it simply won't cast any itself. If you want to eliminate any shadows that might fall upon the background square, you'll have to change the object and ambient colours, as Batronyx mentioned.

Thanks for the info! I tried it, and it works great. :-)