Furthermore,I added them to the userport.mes

This is uncharted waters for me as i've never bothered making custom portraits for Arcanum (i always find the ones provided sufficient enough) but you may want to check out this guide in case you made a step wrong:

https://www.gog.com/forum/arcanum_of_steamworks_and_magick_obscura/for_those_having_trouble_creating_custom_portraits

Also and [url=http://www.terra-arcanum.com/sierra/game/faq_page02.html#portraits]this although i guess the first link will cover you. Cheers!

Thanks for the links, but I've already gone through them all and followed the instructions to the letter. I should add thtat I did (probably two years back) create custom portraits for the game before, back before I had windows 10. Now, nothing I do seems to work.

This is what I've been doing, step for step:

I create the userport.mes file in the portraits folder, then I take the pic in question, open it in paint, re-size the picture to 128x128, then save it as a 256 color bmp called "HUM05_b" (minus quotations) in the portrait folder. Then I take the same picture, re-size it to 64x64 then save it as a 256 color bmp called "HUM05" in the portrait folder. Finally, I edit the userport.mes file, and write the line {1} {HUM05} then save. I've also tried using ANY01, but nothing seems to work.

Finally got it to work, had to re-install the game.