Sam, sounds like you're looking for a spectrophotometer. These are (you're right) expensive instruments from companies such as Barbieri, Konica-Minolta and X-Rite.

The instruments sold solely for calibrating monitors are usually, but not always, colorimeters, which are less expensive.

A spectrophotometer can measure across a range of colour temperatures and into the near-UV. Most if not all need to be in contact with the sample to read its colour accurately.

Spectrophotometes are used for all sorts of purposes in medical research, industrial applications, cosmetics, etc. etc. but you're looking for one intended for printers and / or photographers, something like an X-Rite i1Pro (if you see one of these with 'Macbeth' or 'Gretag-Macbeth' instead of 'X-Rite' as the manufacturer they will be ancient and knackered).

I just checked on ebay (UK) and it looks like a 2nd generation i1Pro will set you back around £400 - £500, but make sure you get the software and the dongle if you're tempted! And don't forget, an i1 Display is a colorimeter, not a spectrophotomete.

Since I do this kind of printing for a living, let me throw in a few thoughts.

The 300ppi standard is based on really old requirements for photo-mechanical reproduction technology, where a 150 line screen was very common. A lot of the technology used for digital printing uses the 300ppi standard as the basis for its printing resolution, which can be 600dpi, 1200dpi, 2400dpi etc. Note the difference between pixels per inch (ppi) and dots per inch (dpi). Do not assume that you have to make an image (PIXELs per inch) match the print resolution (DOTs per inch).

A poster of this size is likely to be printed on an inkjet system, and it is highly unlikely that a regular dot pattern would be used for screening: it's almost certain to use 'stochastic' or 'frequency modulation' (FM) screening. Traditional screens rely on Amplitude Modulation (AM). AM means the dots get bigger to deliver more of a particular colour. FM means that there are more dots of a particular colour where required.

About 25 years ago I was involved in conducting research into how image resolution impacted on perceived printed results, and long story short, for most images the difference between the same image at 200ppi and 300ppi, printed at the same size using the same paper and ink (actually printed on the same page) was, if noticeable at all, negligible.

Images rendered out from 3D apps have not been softened by lenses, scanners, etc. so should not need artificial sharpening to 'improve' them.

A poster this size will be viewed mostly from a distance in excess of 1 metre and will not be scrutinised as closely as a print held in the hand.

Many of the more recent RIPs and print control systems have built-in upscaling engines which can, depending on the image, produce astonishing results even from poor quality originals. I did a job this week where a 900pixel x 600pixel image was printed at A3 (12in x 16.5in) and looked, well, not great, but by no means terrible.

With all that in mind, I'd be inclined to render out to 100ppi equivalent (2400 x 3600 pixels); keep the image in RGB, DO NOT convert to CMYK; and DO NOT apply any sharpening.

Get a grip folks.

Release notes are absolutely standard, they just list the changes - fixes, additions and removals - since the last version. They really should be available for each new version, if for no other reason than it might help a user decide if it's worth installing a particular update. Asking for release notes is not accusing the developer of incompetence, fraud, or whatever.

So yes please Bondware, please tell us what changes are in each version, and put these or a link to them next to the download button.

Thanks!

Treatment of prostate cancer has improved considerably over the years.

50 years ago my paternal Grandfather was given 6 months to live after being diagnosed - and actually held on for 3 agonising years. 12 years ago my father was also diagnosed and given 2 - 3 years, he's still fighting fit and - in his 90s - is playing tennis 3 to 4 times a week. His PSA readings have actually dropped to almost nothing in the last 2 years.

I had a recent 'well man' checkup and I'm clear of anything like that. I must take after my mum.

I notice that the word 'Free' has disappeared almost everywhere on Rendo in relation to this figure.

But on the main page in the marketplace we get: "100% Off - Price: 0.00 USD". Which is still misleading, because no matter how you twist it, you can not buy La Femme for 0.00.

Let's say you went to a bar which had banners and posters everywhere reading... well, let's assume they're not dumb enough to advertise 'Free Beer', but instead have "XYZ Beer at 100% off! You pay nothing!" So you go up to the bartender and order up an XYZ Beer. "You need to spend $3.50."

Huh?

"To get the free, uh, 100% discounted beer that costs no money, you have buy something else - peanuts, snacks, just has to be priced $3.50 or more."

It doesn't tell you that anywhere, I just want a beer.

"Them's the rules, I can't do anything about it."

OK Bye.

(and I think OK Bye is the most polite response the bartender would get).

If Renderosity were based in the UK I'd have set Trading Standards on to them because if a thing is advertised as being 'free', it has to incur no charge, unless it's made explicitly clear that the 'free' promotion is conditional. This should have been advertised as 'free with any purchase of $3.50 or more'.

People aren't moaning about this because they're skinflints, it's because Renderosity have taken it upon themselves to re-define the meaning of the word 'free'. The Oxford English dictionary defines it thus: "Given or available without charge".

This would have been far less damaging if Renderosity has sold La Femme for $3.50 and maybe offered a $3.50 voucher against, for example, the purchase of La Femme related goodies in future. It's a shame because she looks like a really good Poser character, but I can't find out because she's not actually free, and I'm beginning to wonder if Renderosity know what they're doing and / or are trustworthy. If they were to publicly recognise their error, make an apology and do something to sort this out it would do everyone more good than harm, but they'll probably put their heads in the sand until it all blows over.

Everything is 'free' or rather $0.00 until you get to the payment stage, when "Shopping Cart Items do not meet the Minimum Purchase Price of $3.50" message is displayed. Minimum pricing for card and other electronic payments is now illegal in some places, including the EU. You can refuse to sell me something of low value if I want to pay on a card but you can not insist that I pay a minimum amount for using that card. You can have a store-wide policy of a minimum sale value. It is not clear on what basis the minimum price is charged, though I'm sure your lawyers would say it's the store-wide policy, in which case you should make that explicitly clear.

In that case you can not offer an item for $0.00 without breaking the policy. You should not be asking for CC details for a zero value transaction, this looks like data harvesting.

Surely the point of offering this figure for free is to let people assess it: if they like it they'll buy stuff for it, why are you messing this up?

If you have the DSON thing already installed, try this - it will import all sorts of D|S stuff into Poser, not always perfectly, but well enough most of the time.

Have a look at this old utility by the late lamented Ralf Sesseler.

"A simple line that is attached to the eye and follows the eye movement to point where the figure looks at. Works for (almost) any figure."

Going down to 400x400 pixels is a terrible idea if there are fine lines and other details such as text, 400x400 represents a tiny amount of visual information and is useless for any other purpose than a low-res preview: but if that's what you're after, read on.

If the images are _literally _black and white (rather than grayscale), convert them to bitmap mode (i.e. where each pixel is either black or white) _before _reducing the size. This should avoid any anti-aliasing artefacts (which is probably what's causing the blurry text), but this process (pixel decimation) is going to be hit-or-miss as far as retaining the detail you want.

I'm no kind of lawyer, but I do occasionally have to make a judgement about copyright issues, usually to informally advise artists about how to protect themselves and less usually to warn them when they might be breaking someone else's copyright.

Example: an artist that I produce fine art prints for does celebrity portraits. No way they'd get the celeb to sit for them, so they collect a dozen or so photos of a celeb and use those to paint an impression of the celeb: no problem there, they're not directly copying anything. But recently, when Prince died unexpectedly, they needed to produce a portrait in a hurry. They found a photo - one single photo - online and copied it, albeit in paint. They weren't happy when I suggested that they were leaving themselves open to a copyright claim. Yes, they'd used skill and effort to produce their work, but it would be hard to convince anyone that it wasn't 100% based on that photo.

At the risk of stating the obvious: if you copy a creative work that is still within copyright, you are infringing the rights of the owner. It doesn't sound like you can claim that any of the usual exceptions apply (non-commercial research, review, parody, educational use) so I'd comply with their take-down requests promptly.

Hmmm. Unfortunately 360 Total Security thinks the threat is so serious that it deletes it without offering any alternative. I've been in touch with Ralf and each alert appears to be a false positive: the antivirus being over-enthusiastic, though it's been very reliable so far.

Looks like I'll have to disable it to get the updates installed.

Same problem with Morphing Clothes and Poser eXplorer. This suggests that there's a real problem here, please investigate this urgently.

OK. Now's the perfect time for the goons that design and code - I mean "design" and "code" - Renderosity to get their act together or get sacked. This is my first visit here in weeks and I note that it's still a horrible shambles.

Get it sorted.

The prefs will be in C:Users [USERNAME] AppDataRoamingPoser Pro11

Folders in this path may be hidden, so unhide if you need to.