@waynewiz: I'm also using Poser Pro 11 on a Mac, and here's how the magnifier tool has always worked for me (as far back as Poser 9): After I've chosen it from the Tools menu, I click and drag over an area in the preview window that I want to zoom in on. So maybe what you're missing is the click AND DRAG part?

As far as I know, zooming in is the only option. To zoom back out, I just use the keyboard shortcut for "restore camera" (shift command h). That re-sets the view to the active camera's most recently "memorized" state. (So obviously that only works if you memorized the camera's settings before using the magnifier!)

As for dealing with changes in an animation timeline, here's what I do: I turn animation OFF for all my cameras except the Main camera, and I only use the Main camera to actually frame each shot. For anything else I might need to do on a frame, I use the Aux, Pose, Face or orthographic cameras, all of which are quickly accessed via keyboard shortcuts. (You have to enter your own shortcut for the Aux camera, on Poser's Preferences panel). If I need to see something on a particular frame the way the Main camera sees it, in order to fix a pose or whatever, then I just copy the Main camera's parameters on that frame to the Aux camera.

You can also, of course, add new cameras to the scene, but as far as I can tell there's no way to assign keyboard shortcuts to them, so I don't use that method.

Hope that helps!

Oh, and one more thing: I've gotten myself into quite a mess by switching animation on and off for the Main camera, so now I just leave it on.

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TOOLS: MacBook Pro; Poser Pro 11; Cheetah3D; Photoshop CC

FIGURES: S-16 (improved V4 by Karina), M4, K4, Mavka, Toons, and Nursoda's people

GOALS: Stylized and non-photorealistic renders in various fantasy styles