hello everyone,firstly i love this site and this is my first post here. im just wondering about image quality.i notice when i render with poser 7 the finished result often looks rather dull. not very bright even though i use all differnt lighting scenarios etc. am i right in assuming that to achieve this level of image quality i have to use photoshop to brighten colours etc ? any help would be appreciated. :)

You shouldn't have to use Photoshop to brighten anything.

How are you saving the file?  .png or compressed .jpg?

how are you setting up your lighting and what render settings are you using.  Posting an example might help too - it's easier to see what you mean

i save mu images in jpeg , i dont use any compression though. do you think if i save in png it will bring out the colours more? i will post an image next time i do a render. oh also i usually just use automatic render on high quality.

For me it's probably a light settings problem rather than a save file one.

If P7 is anything like P6 in the default settings, you should really forget about using them because they won't give you very good results.

Play with the lights & custom render settings, I'm sure you'll find a setting which you'll prefer. It's all trial & error.

It's all about your light, and definitely changing the default light colors to.. what you'd find in the real world. you can sample colors from

http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm

and you will notice a near instant improvement in the quality of your renders. Once your lights are good,  then you can look into tweaking Firefly settings. Finally, your can auto color / auto contrast in Photoshop, but that will only work when your lights are good.

It's amazing how lightwork can make or break an image, it's so important to the final piece.