I've been trying to make my backgrounds look more painted, but I don't have Photoshop. I used GIMP.
First, I did some fiddling with the colours to make them stand out more. I followed this tutorial, being liberal with the instructions so I didn't undo my previous work.
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After:
What do you suggest to make this look better? I'm aiming for a Katawa Shoujo style with a Clannad-esque colour scheme.
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Before
Build the basics first, then add all the fun bits.
Hmmm, well, you have a good start... it seems like one of the filters you used made things a little grainy, though. I also use GIMP, but I'm not much of an artist so it's hard for me to say! I ended up using FotoSketcher to turn photographs into BGs.
If you haven't already installed the additional GIMP plugins, I highly recommend them. You can install the gimp-plugins-registry package on linux, or get them for Windows. There's some great artistic plugins, and batch plugins, etc.
In all seriousness, if you don't mind a slightly cookie-cutter look, GIMP has some options under the Filters tab that should do exactly what you want. At the very least, they're fun to play with. I don't know if you have to install them separately, but they're definitely free.
(I used them for my Nano entry, but take that with a grain of salt -- I have no commercial ambitions here.)
