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What would REALLY help is if there was a way to lock that DOF "target" on the screen.  With photography I usually lock focus with the center AF point and then recompose to get the framing I want.  I find that very hard with Poser since the focus point vanishes as soon as I let go of the slider.  

I'm not sure I understand you here. With "DOF Target" are you talking about the crosshair thingie? That stays smack in the middle of things until you disable it... So I'm not sure which "focus point" that can vanish.

Other than that, using the depth cue as a mask is a good idea - sometimes it gives better results than other times, it depends a lot of the scene.

Whenever I've done something that required DOF in larger degrees, I've made two renders, one with the full scene and one with only the thing that should be sharp and combined them in Photoshop. Poser gives you an alphachannel for free when you render over "nothing"

HERE is an example where I used that method and blurred it manually afterwards (general blur filter on the background layer, graduated hand-made blur on the creature)
At the time I made this, I didn't know the Depth Cue trick, which is why there are places that should have been blurred, and isn't - and vice versa :)

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You just can't put the words "Poserites" and "happy" in the same sentence - didn't you know that? LaurieA
  Using Poser since 2002. Currently at Version 11.1 - Win 10.