Ok, here's my new question (someday I will be able to afford a private tutor, but not now..):  When I import a poser figure I prefer to multiply the texture map with a color for each body area/shading domain.  Is there a way to quickly assign the same colour to the entire poser figure to multiply with whatever texture map is used in the area?  Most of the figures use two or more maps (a head map and a body map)

Not that I have seen in Carrara :)  You could do it  in  Poser before importing  ... I think there is a script for that. 

In the shader Room would, possibly, this help?
Multi Channel>Operators>Multiply

What I've done is create some stock poser skin shaders set up with a multiplyer. Then, on a new figure, I'll replace the regular shader by using a Reference shader in each of the branches of the tree that use a skin shader. That way I can modify a single shader an have it effect all of the areas on the character. It takes a little bit of time the first time around but then goes very quickly on subsequent applications.