I know this can go different ways i.e. size of the texture in pixels and size of the texture in Megs. My question is both. Should I sacrifice detail for size?

I personally like working with 2000x2000px (approx depending on shape). It gives a nice amount of detail for close-ups, while not making the files too heavy to work with. But thats just me :)

I can always shrink it down as needed. :) Small textures look terrible when enlarged.

I debate this issue, I guess the size all depends upon how detailed you want the model to be. Like my Darth Maul model, he has the standard 2000 X 2000 sized map for the head texture.... BUT I wanted a highly detailed bump map so I made that 4000 X 4000. I think it all depends upon the level of detail you want to capture in your model.

So what is the maximum size?

Some food for thought... Just for the sake of discussion (and to make it easy), let's assume that on Mike's head texture, the UV map is split front/back and each take up 50% of the map. So on a 4000 pixel wide map, the front took up 2000 pixels of that and the back of the head took up 2000 pixels. Ok, so let's assume that the textures you create are indeed 4000 pixels wide (2000 front and 2000 back)... on an image like above, where the front of his head takes up less than half the width of a 640 pixel wide image (let's just say that it takes up 400 pixels, just to make it easy), then the software has to average 2000 pixels of texture into a 400 pixel space. Meaning that you can actually get 'less definition' in your image, because you throw out (or muddy up with averaging) 4 out of every 5 pixels of texture/bump. On the other hand, if you render a 1000 pixel wide image of half of his face (something like centered up, with maybe the edges of his eyes on the edges of the image), you'd get a 1-to-1 (roughly) texture->image ratio. In short, unless you're going to be rendering large images of extreme close-ups, 4000 is overkill. On the other hand, if you're creating textures that others will use, and you don't know how they intend to use them, it's always easier to scale down than up, so bigger is better unless there are filesize issues. Personally, I almost never use textures over about 3000 and I'd rather buy nicely detailed (and lower compression setting) 2000 sized textures than highly compressed 4000 sized textures when it comes to dimension vs. filesize vs. image quality.

What Spanki said. :-) The answer depends upon how the texture is going to be applied, though. If you're talking about a UV-mapped mesh, then obviously a higher-res texture will yield higher-res renders. However, I purchased some large leather textures here some time ago, and have found them to be useless in Poser, because the app doesn't allow for scaling at all. (P4/PP ... I don't know about P5.) I can't, say, assign them as a material to a dress or purse for Victoria, because the scaling is all wrong. I've tried shrinking them in Photoshop, but that didn't seem to help. They're fine in Vue, because Vue gives you lots of control over textures, but in Poser there can be "issues."

I understand all that jibbajabba, but what is the maximum size and resolution that the application allows to be used.

Poser 4 seems to be limited to 4096. I don't know about Poser 5.

I recently rendered a Vicky 3 in Bryce. Her head ended up less than 100 pixels tall. Her face texture was 4000x4000 which I hadn't even noticed. WHAT A WASTE OF RAM. LOL

Thanks for the responses and views on this subject.