Foxseelady, As Dr Geep says, the ambient light overrides shadows... but shadows in the real world are seldom pure black. Look at snow on a wintry day, and you will see that it is purplish-blue in the shadows as a complement to the yellow sunlight and the deep blue skydome color. Unless something is dead, I try to put some color into the shadow areas. There is a lot of bounced light which would take Poser forever to calculate. There are global light set-ups and the HDRI lighting setups, but my ancient G4 will creep in misery if I try to load the 40 or so lights! Upping the ambient just a little bit is a good way to fake the effect of bounced light. If you want to play with a blacklight effect, or glowing eyes in darkness, and other neat stuff, you can push the ambient way up. Robin Wood had a tutorial on her site for making vampire eyes this way, but it also works for cats and other nocturnal creatures. If you saw the Bladerunner movie many years ago, the replicants' eyes also flashed under certain conditions, and this trick could fake that as well. However, I tend to use things subtlely (after finding out what they can do at extremes). Play with it! :) Back to this image... I'm glad that you have the original files, hopefully in layers, so that you can adjust. You probably want the attention to be focussed upon her face, so be sure that is well-lit, and then pull the rest of the image into coordination. You can use contrast, depth-of-field, lighting and other techniques to direct the viewer's eye. Carolly PS, I'm glad that you took my remarks in the right spirit. I don't often comment upon WIPs because people can be too sensitive, but I appreciate it when someone is honest about my work... it is the only way to grow as an artist.