I get a great scene set up with dramatic lighting but when I render the lighting is gone and it's so bright. What am I missing. I checked every box in render options also. Please help.

Which version of Poser are you using?

Poser 5

How many lights are you using? What sort of intensity are we talking about here?

It's not really possible to see the effect of lights until the image is rendered. P4 or P5 makes no difference in this respect, with the exception that P4 previews can often be nearer to your final image because its own render functions are not as complex as P5.

But I see the effects of the lights before it is rendered. I used the free light set called Passage from RNDA and the one I used gave a blueish effect to the image but when rendered it was gone and everything was bright white? Do I have to turn lights off before I use light effects?

Lights do often come out brighter in the render, as SamTherapy said. go to freestuff and look for a utility called "light panel". It's a python script. Run that, select all your lights with it, and knock the intensity down by about 25%. Render with that, adjust some more, etc. Often lighting a scene can be a case of trial and error, I'm afraid :)

Spotlights do not show their true intensities in the preview window. You can either lower the intensities of your spotlights or set the dist_start and dist_end parameters to provide some falloff and thereby achieve a more subtle effect.

Geep did a great tut on Poser lighting, if you do a search on geep you should be able to find it. I found his tut most informative and a great help in lighting scenes. 8) Catlin