I like it my friend!!!Bravissimo!V:DDD.Hugsxx Whylma

Excellent !

If you are looking for some suggestions, I have a few ideas for you. First of all, what happened to the left shin? The high contrast look is a style, but it can get away from you if you let it. I have encouraged others to look at a histogram, and trust the numbers - not your eyes. If you look at anything for long enough, it will seem right. Then you come back the next day and it seems very different! In this image, the skin is right on the edge of being blown out on the bright end. The bikini is definitely blown out and losing detail. When this happens, the easiest thing to do is change its color and try another render. Also, The hair is getting lost. If you're trying to have an image with one light against a black background, try a lighter hair color. So anyway, if I were doing this picture, I would add a Diffuse IBL (Poser) or UberEnvironment (DS) or whatever in the software you are using, at a low intensity so that only the background is pure black. Then, I would reduce the mesh light intensity accordingly so that nothing is blown out. If the bikini was still a problem, I would make it darker and less saturated before doing a final render. I hope this helps! Good luck!

if you will, please tell me how to read the histogram. I've tried to use it, but once i start moving the curve, I get lost. What am i trying to do with histogram? Move all of the lines closer? or to a certain quadrant? Thank you for your comments!

Well, this is kind of involved, and I may post something to my own gallery on this subject in the future. The most important step is just looking at the histogram. In your un-retouched image, look for a large spike at the very top of the scale. If you see one, it means that the image has "blown out" and some detail has been lost in the bright areas, and there's no getting it back. The solution is to turn down your lights and re-render. (Ideally you are looking at a draft quality render). If you are able to look at individual RGB channels, I usually find that Red is the most likely to hit the top. Another thing you can do, something that I find very useful, is to use a small program that lets you read the color value of any pixel on the screen, such as ColorPix (Windows) or Digital Color Meter (Mac). If you see any areas that are reaching a value of 255 (probably red), turn the lights down a little and re-render. It doesn't have to be much, just so nothing reaches 255. Basically, 255 is the highest value that can be recorded. In a rendering, the "actual" value may be 300, 350, etc., but this will all be recorded as 255. That is how anything that "should" be over 255 loses its information.

I much prefer the previous version - this one seems far too bright to me.

Just read MrGorf's comments above and did a couple of checks. The skin on the original image is using just about the full dynamic range of colours (i.e from near black 0,0,0 to near white 255,255,255) and the histogram is fairly flat, so you've got a nice spread over the full colour range. But the skin on this image is only using the upper half (from about 128,128,128 to white) and there is a bulge on the histogram near the top end.

Thank you very much for you comments. But i have a question. Won't characters with lighter skin naturally have brighter color range? Is the goal to reduce all colors from white, black and asian persons to a similar range in similar style renders? Your help in this area is very much appreciated.

(Note: I'm no expert, and these are just my thoughts... :) Q:Won't characters with lighter skin naturally have brighter color range? A: Yes, and if you have several people with different skin tones in the same picture, then the darker skins would most likely be using the more of the lower end of the range, and the lighter-skinned ones using more of the upper end. Q:Is the goal to reduce all colors from white, black and asian persons to a similar range in similar style renders? A: No! Definitely not! But if you're doing a picture of a single light-skinned person don't feel that you can only use the top end of the range, and for just a dark-skinned person don't restrict yourself to the bottom end of the scale As well as the skin tone you have to consider the lighting

Beautidul character and grea posing !