Photograph Background Filters?

[[Hana]]

Hello,

Maybe someone could help me. I am working on a VN right now, and I have absolutely no talent in painting backgrounds in the least. So I decided on using Photographs and putting them through filters. The game's story is fairly dark, so I've been trying to use filters fit the atmosphere of the story, but nothing really works.
I've seen a couple of VN's on here with filtered backgrounds (or at least what look like filtered backgrounds.), and I was wondering if anyone had tips on what kind of filters look best or any help on the matter.

Thank you!

[Wintermoon]

Get better photographs and don't rely so much on filters.

Also, try turning down the saturation and/or playing with the color balance.

[[Hana]]

Get better photographs and don't rely so much on filters.

Its not really that the quality of the photographs are bad, its more that filters are a personal preference. To me, using plain photographs looks kind of odd when you put a drawing in front of it.

Also, try turning down the saturation and/or playing with the color balance.

Thanks! I'll try that.

[MaiMai]

Its not really that the quality of the photographs are bad, its more that filters are a personal preference. To me, using plain photographs looks kind of odd when you put a drawing in front of it.

It also depends on what your drawings look like against said background. A character sprite of high quality with a photograph of high quality usually works all right (ie. Katawa Shoujo), but that might not fit everyone's taste. But yes, color balance helps bring out the colors in a photograph very well.

[deerchan]

Hmm... If you use photoshop, the pencil/artistic filters can do wonders for darkening and making them look less realistic. It relies on colors, though, so set your colors to a grey and brown possibly. Also try using a filter that smoothes everything out, ect. Maybe play with layer styles.

[adrix89]

http://alanwho.com/photoshop/photoshop- ... c-filters/
Specially recommend cutout for images that have a small color pallet

[luminarious]

One option is to use Sketchup. Some of the bundled styles look quite artistic. From the warehouse you can even get ready-made models of trees, cars, teacups and whatever. It takes very little effort to learn too.

[Rezznik]

Get Topaz Simply @ http://www.topazlabs.com/simplify/. While it isn't an all-in-one wonder solution for backgrounds...it definitely gives you a strong starting point.

[luminarious]

http://www.fotosketcher.com/ is also very, very impressive. It makes excellent watercolours from your photos, has other effects as well. Go check out the gallery for proof. It even does batch processing, so you can do all backgrounds at once..

[[Hana]]

Thanks everyone This is really helpful!

[this_barb]

Why not try to trace the background? Nobody will blame you for it. Just put it on one layer, lower the opacity, and use the Pen tool (or alternatively, you can use a regular paintbrush with a tablet).

I also believe photographs look funky in visual novels simply because they exude more values of shading than "cell-shaded" characters do. It breaks the continuity of the character vs. the background.