Quote - [The tone in these threads gives one the impression that the majority of Poser users read the forums. Seriously, how many Poser artists actually read these forums? I've read posts by Poser users with posting numbers under 10 who claim they've been using Poser for years. I think we might be flattering ourselves to think that we're reaching a large part of the Poser community.

Totally agree. I've been using Poser since 2003. I've lurked in the forums under the account that is linked to paypal in our household for quite some time. But this forum is not a Poser mecca.

Quote - have bought into the concept that Poser colour processing has issues which users (successfully of unsuccessfully) compensate for with adding more lights. That's just a fact.

This is not true for me. I don't think it's necessarily true for most users. And this description of what GC or does not do is exactly what confused me.

I don't use GC in my renders. But I also don't compensate by adding more lights. I don't see yellow blooms.

What I do see in my raw renders, and in images posted to the gallery, are renders that are too dark, and slightly desaturated.

Most of the time it isn't obvious to me when I view the completed render within poser itself because for some reason poser displays on my machine with a little more contrast than do other image viewing/editing applications. I don't know why.

However, 99% of the time, taking that render and applying a photoshop preset in curves fixes it instantly.

If I'm compositing the alpha channel against another layer as a background, then I might use the exposure adjustment, and compare the two layers in gray scale.

So, thanks to this thread, I've concluded that when I have to do that anyway, adjusting GC ahead of time within Poser itself is really a waste of time.

In the end, it boils down to what I enjoy doing with my time.

I have the choice of changing some nodes, rendering, changing some more nodes, rendering, changing the first node back, rendering, posting my 3 renders to the forums, changing 22 nodes on advice of the forum, rendering, changing the lighting, rendering, changing the lighting some more, rendering, posting to the forum with 3 more renders, changing my lighting on advice of the forum, rendering, changing a few nodes to compensate for the lighting change, rendering, changing the nodes some more, rendering, posting my revised renders to the forums, changing 17 nodes on advice from the forums, changing those nodes again on conflicting advice from the forums, rendering, posting my suicide note in the forums, hanging myself.

Or, I could render, change the lighting, render, open photoshop, adjust with curves or exposure -- watch the changes in real time in the preview - save, share the finished image.

Some people like solving puzzles and some people like making pictures. There's a lot of overlap between the 2 groups, but when our primary interests don't intersect, I think we have trouble communicating because our goals are different.

Snarlygribbly -- Yes, exactly.**
**