Let’s begin. Hopefully, you have taken the time to read the “What You Need To Know Before You Start” page and have already downloaded/installed the pose player mod from Mod the Sims. If not, please go back and do that now. From this point on, the pose player will be referred to as “clap board”.
Pose List Poses
By now you have downloaded some poses you are eager to try. If not you can find many different kinds on my site here, posesbybee. Pose list packages are usually not zipped and end up in your downloads folder, looking as so:
With your mouse, you can right click on the .package file, choose copy. Then inside your packages folder, right click again and choose paste. Or you can simply move the file right into your packages folder. Your choice. Now lets head into game.
Last year I started adding a Catalogue pic and a text file in my pose list download. Once you unzip the DL, you only need to put the package file (as shown above) into your Mods -packages folder.
Step By Step
1. Choose where you want to take the pic and decide if it is lit well enough.
2. Go into buy mode – decor – miscellaneous and find the clapboard.
3. Place the clapboard anywhere in the room.
4. Pull up the cheat bar and type in testingCheatsEnabled true
5. Pull up the cheat bar and type moveobjects on
6. Lower their autonomy, or just use pause. I will explain that later.
7. Pull up the cheat bar and type hideHeadLineEffects on (to remove thought bubbles and the green icon above their head.
8. Consider their needs. You can either slide their needs up on the needs bar. Or increase the needs of all the sims in the house, by using shift on your keyboard, left clicking on the mailbox and choosing “Make Needs Static”
9. Choose the sim you want. Click on the clapboard.
10. Choose select pose from list. Find the pose you want. Click on it and then the check mark at the bottom right.
11. One by one have all the sims choose their pose.
As you can see, they do not pop into place. Now is where the MOO cheat comes into action. Choose buy mode. Grab each sim using the hand tool in buy mode and turn them into the right direction using the arrows on your keyboard. Then slide them into place with your mouse. Easy Peasy.
Step 6 Explanation – Lower Their Autonomy Versus using pause while posing.
In The Sims games you have the option to choose the autonomy of your sims. This means, you can give your sims high level control over their life, or low control, where they basically stand there and wait for commands. This setting is found in options, which you pull up by clicking on the three little dots on the bottom left of the game screen and choose options from the list. 
Some people prefer to slide the Sims Autonomy Level down to Low Free Will while posing. Which is fine and effective. It stops sims from talking to one another and pulling out those phones! That one is annoying! But keep in mind, once you do that, it affects everyone in game, not just the sims you are posing. Say you have a baby in the crib and the pose picture you are trying to create takes you a good amount of time to get the setting right, the lighting just so etc. No other sim in the house hold is going to care for that baby, because you are not telling them to do so.
I will use autonomy if I am posing all the sims in the house hold. Otherwise, I leave them on high free will and keep the game on pause at all times. If you choose to use autonomy, make sure you also keep the game on pause and remember to change their level back to normal when done.
Non Pose List Step By Step
Follow the steps 1-9 as shown above.
10. Click on the clapboard and choose pose by name
This screen will pop up:
Here you will type in the code that is provided by the creator for the pose you need to use. In the non pose list download, I provide a Catalogue pic and a text file with the codes. I only started creating these pics in 2022, so pose sets from former years will not have one.
Here is an example of a cataglogue pic.
Poses by Bee 