I love Poser because it has such a wealth of resources to choose from. There are objects and textures and poses and character files galoure from so many diferent creative folks that one can intergrate into your own pictures and gives a virtually unlimited directions you can take them to make beautiful works of your own.. The learning curve is kept fairly simple and is usable by beginners to very advanced artists. Also there are MANY venues where one can show these works among others using the same program.. It is all because this is such a popular program.. Besides, I am a Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley California resident and this is the two towns that have hosted the company that makes Poser. (I am nothing if not loyal to local businesses.) It still uses the old Kai Krause user Interface (as does Bryce and a number of other programs and while some find it a little Klunky I find it to be easy to use for my own purposes. It is compatible with Daz Sudio and through this program also compatible with Bryce.. I spend almost 15 hours a day working with Poser so you could say I am a Poserholic (that's a good thing I think) and that alone makes the choice of 5 stars inevitable in my way of looking at it.. Since Poser 6 this program has been adding much better features and for the Mac it has become more and more compatible as well...