Kelly, You can use P5 as a "better" P4 (or P3 for that matter), most of the interface is still much the same. (I went straight from P3 to P5 with little difficulty.) Although it DOES require more system resources, it's greedy for them! If you can afford it and have a reasonably good machine (a minimum of 256 meg memory, preferably more! - and LOTs of hard-drive room for all the freebies that you'll end up downloading..) I'd say go for it. You don't have to learn all the additional bits immediately. In fact it's proably better not to. As a plan of action (and you don't need P5 for this) I would suggest: - Think of poser as a theatre, or a photographer's studio. - Get happy and confident with posing characters so they look natural (it takes quite some practice, especially with the hands). - Learn the lighting techniques. Lighting can change the appearance of a scene dramatically, and is not always easy to achieve. PS to this: in P5 (I don't know about previous versions), you can call up a "shadow cam" to look through; this gives you a view as if looking from the light itself. It helps a lot with positioning lights. - Get to grips with creating the environment for your characters using props, background photos and/or textures on walls. (There are LOADS of pre-created environments and props in the free-stuff, and searching the web will turn up hundreds (if not thousands) more, very often free. The above are the basics (it's the equivalent of learning to play the scales on a musical instrument). Once you are satisfied with your skills there, it's time to start experimenting:-)) And the fun really starts. And family life goes out of the window.... ... as you get to grips with the hair room, the cloth room, the materials room.. all good P5 fun places to play in:-)) Cheers, and good luck, Diolma