or a bump (?) file I still haven't figured it out ARGH!Thanks, Herne ;)

If you have Photoshop 6 or better, there's a neat little Photoshop action to do it: http://www.poserpros.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6380 You can also convert within Poser, but you have to convert BEFORE you try to apply any MAT poses that reference a .bum file. To do this, load a model in Poser (a simple prop will work for this), then choose Render: Materials and in the Bump option, go to Poser's Textures directory (immediately below Runtime) and find the .jpg you want to convert. Apply to the object you've loaded as a bump, and when Poser asks if you want to convert, have Poser do that for you. When you're done, just hit Cancel in the Materials window and no bump will be applied to the model (or anything else, but the bumps will be there in the same directory where the .jpg files are). bonni

You don't even have to load a prop or model into Poser: just use the ground plane. Select the Ground object, click the Open button next to "Bump Map", find the jpg file, and Poser will convert it. Click the "Cancel" button so you don't apply the bump map to the ground.

One of the great fixes that CL did in Poser 5 is that they finally allow the user to click on the Jpg file, when the item is looking for a .bum file. Resave the item, to the Library, afterwards and it won't look for the .bum again. Before the Service Release, Poser would keep looking for the file and often search the entire hard drive twice to find the nonexistant file for twenty minutes and more.

I haven't had any luck "suggesting" the alternative jpg bump file. If you have Poser 5, get CorrectReference, and let it correct the bump reference to jpg. Of course, you must have Poser 4, or you wouldn't want to know how to convert bump maps to "bum."

Not necessarily. Maybe they're making a freebie or product and they want it to be P4-compatible. :-) I want to know if there's any way to convert bums to jpgs. Some products I recently bought came with only bum files. Which is weird. I don't think I've ever run into that before.

I want to know if there's any way to convert bums to jpgs. Not really. Well, sort of. If you change the extension from .bum to .bmp (they are .bmp files, actually) you can open it in Photoshop or some other editing program, and you can make it greyscale, but it may or may not look right when applied. The bump for Poser is actually a sort of embossing process and it's got odd colors in it. Going greyscale can work on a lot of bump maps. You may as well try it and see. ;-) bonni

wow thanks for all the advice :) I have photoshop7 and I tried to get in to the website bu I guess I'll have to do it from my work computer (Thanks Elizabyte) :) I'm still trying to figure this all out. I'll hopefully be doing another pic soon. I was working on a SCI FI project when my HD crashed, now I have to start all over again (thank the Gods for back read/writable cd roms) Ken

Thanks, Bonni! I opened the bumps and they're...chartreuse. How odd! I'll try making them grayscale and seeing how they look.

I opened the bumps and they're...chartreuse. Yeah, purty, ain't they? ;-P bonni

Chartruse? that'll put a different bend on things won't it? ;)