I'm with Niles. After you learn how to get everything on the darn figure-- clothes, textures etc. After you learn how to uncross the eyes, and get a kind of an expression and some kind of pose that is solid on the ground. You need to light it right. The wrong lights flatten everything, wreck the textures, weird up the expressions, etc, The right lights bring out the depth, the feeling, the soul. They are a pain to manage and I tried to learn them catch as catch can-- I used canned lights, I collected canned lights. I tried everything until Poser crashed and then tried more. I combine light sets, layer different lighting environments. Use one spot, two spots. If only that gawdawful little light dome thingey in the corner was relative to where your model was, I'd be sooooo happy but it's not. Even before you learn lights, though, develop your eye. Render a lot-- I hope you're not in Poser 5. Search the render for mistakes, is the cloth, hair, other body parts going through the body? Are the eyes focused? Render bigger than the display window more than once, it shows much more. Get anal about searching your render for imperfections or things that just aren't right. I'm going to be unorthodox here. Learn a painting program well and postwork your render. Blur your joints, your pointy meshes. After you learn the lighting tool in Poser, learn the smudge tool in PSP or PS or whatever you use to post and convert to jpg. You gotta put your name on it somehow. Do as I say, not as I do, learn to put shadows in where Poser won't. LOL, I hate shadow work. Any post glow effects, you admire in the galleries are easily aquired without expensive filters if you have a program with layers. Duplicate the bottom layer, screen it at 50 % or less, dup again, soft color it at 50% or less. Use Fantastic Machine's Paint engine, free, on one of those layers, you have custom diffuse glow. So, to make your work look like some of the great work in the galleries, learn lighting, then learn judicious postwork. Emily