Portraits? How I love portraits and there are many ways to create them. I would like to share a few tips in creating portrait renders as well as composing your rendered image in Photoshop (or any other photo-editing programs/software). For beginners and intermediate DAZ or Poser artists like myself, here are some tips. So you have your favorite character on the scene, hair and makeup as well as your selected outfit. Select the best lighting (HDR Lights are perfect) that will light up your subject but will not be too excessive. A good balance of light and shadow is perfect, and perhaps add a bit of rim light for a dramatic portrait. I used a left spotlight for this render plus a HDR lighting. Don't worry if the render turned out a bit darker, it can be fixed with post work. Before rendering your closeups, these are things I keep in mind-- she needs to look natural. No, not like Kylie Jenner natural but "your own natural look." Using the parameters, from the Tool Bar (DS), select the Universal Tool and click the face, or open the Scene Tab and select "Head." Under Pose Controls, select the Eyes and bring up the lower lids a bit, between 18 to 22.5% is great. Relax her eyes for about 40 to 50%. Move the eyes sideways, about -15.9 %, then move the Eyes up to 20.8% so she is not looking directly at the camera. It gives the subject a glamour, classy, cover girl look. As for the mouth, we will give her a smiling expression. Mouth Smile is 30.8%, Mouth Smile Simple 4.0%. If the character's teeth are small and her lower teeth is showing, select the lower teeth from the Scene Tab and lower it a bit with Y Translate, the upper teeth might need to be adjusted as well but careful not to show too much gums. Most glamour shots normally shows the upper teeth only for a slight, natural smile. Check the hair and clothing for poke throughs and render. I usually render to pixel size 3,000 by 3,900 so I can see everything in postwork and if there are a bit of grainy areas, it can be reduced for the final artwork. Let's go to the post work. Open the image with your favorite image editing program. Duplicate the layer and turn off the original layer. The duplicate will be your working layer. Brighten it, or use Image/Adjustments/Curves. Pick the options from the Auto Color Correction Options, the Enhance Per Channel Contrast is my favorite as it really makes the image pop out with the right shadows and lighted areas. I like adding extra layers of png plants (or other elements) that I have rendered beforehand to frame the image. You can edit, blur, add shadows, change the Hue/Saturation to fit the color of the render. My main focus is her face and including botanical elements add color and gives a focal point. Last but not least, the fireflies or "glowies" by Deviney. I love them as they add dimension to the portrait. After spraying them here and there with the brush tool, I add a layer mask to the fireflies layer and with a soft edge brush, I erase some of the excess and strays. We don't want to overdo the glowies as we only need them to fill up the empty spots and to add dimension to the scene. That's it! Thank you for taking a peek at my work and for the comment. Check out our free stuff, Yoshiko is now available for download. A collaborative work of Shadownet and yours truly, Yoshiko is for commercial and non-commercial use. She comes with two characters, one for G8F and one for Genesis 8.1 Female. This set is morphs only, no textures included. Just apply any of your favorite character textures and render away!