Photos to backgrounds: Are these good enough?

[Hollister Man]

After working on many backgrounds, I have to admit that I can't seem to get a semi-realistic style down.  I should probably just work until I find my own style, but it doesn't fit with the type of games I like.

I have recently been playing with photoshop, and have discovered a way that I feel makes some good backgrounds, using photos and filters.  For complicated ones, it might work to just 'paste up' different photos into something resembling what I want.  What do ya'll think?  These were borrowed from MacDesktops, then backgroundized.





To me it seems that there is a little too much 'noise' in them, especially on the grass.  I think there's a way to remedy that, but I thought I'd seek advice first.

[Haddas]

I took the liberty to edit your backgrounds a bit...

See, the problem with this is that you haven't used NEARLY enough photoshop filters to creat a good background.

The results speak for themselves:

[Hollister Man]

Ow my eyes!11!!! The lenz flaer!!!1!1!11  Haddas, you're mean

Blackbird, they're not really my pictures, just modified.  If you have photoshop I can show you how, though. 

[Mr Jake]

the many problem I found while trying to find pictures to trace was finding pictures in the the correct perspective for what I wanted.

[Snarky]

To answer the question, they look good to me. Only in the second can I see traces of manipulation (the foreground and background being from different pictures, at least I think so). What have you done to them? Just erased people, extended edges and that kind of thing, or more radical retouching?

[Haddas]

Meh, I had another go at editing a pic, I chose to edit number 3 to see if I could make it look like number 2. Also, what filters do you use?



(note the blurring in the distance)

[Ben]

The blurring is a good idea.. I think you should use less of it though. Right now it's distracting from the foreground, which I'm sure isn't what you had in mind..

[Ginny]

Yes, it's somewhat distracting. I'm not sure about a blur at all, maybe if it's small it'll look good, or maybe not.
At first I thought those were the original photos you were showing, not edits. That's really photorealistic!
I like stonehedge the most. The green lampposts (?) in the second pic looks a bit more like lightsabre's than lampposts :. Maybe it's the color, or the gradient. The 3rd is also very good, but I like stonehedge the most .

[Hollister Man]

I was really surprised at how the stonehenge one came out.Ã,  I agree that the perspective would be hard to work with in any photo, but I am thinking of using a really good camera and taking photos that I need, or working from good, photorealistic 3d renders.Ã, 

I didn't manipulate any of them in the way of cut/pasting them.Ã,  The second was reduced to 320x200, the others were 640x400.Ã,  #2 was just a so-so picture to begin with, so it came out blurry instead of sharp.

I think that, rather than blurring, depth cueing would look better.Ã,  Adding a mist of fog or dust in the air, the further objects get from the camera.Ã,  Its common in reality, but most photographers try NOT to take pictures of it.

I have been told that AGDI uses old Sierra backgrounds to get textures from, so they can make their re-makes look more authentic.  Perhaps this is what I need to do, add real-world textures to my pre-sketched BGs, then render them like these.  It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but far better than what I am currently able to do.

[Blackthorne]

I took a try to make them like Sierra VGA backgrounds, 320x200....




Plenty of pixels and noise.  Heh.

Color reduction, mostly.  Few graphical touch ups and texture additions.

Bt

[timcclayton]

Going on from previous comments about techniques, I invented an interesting, Tintin-style drawing technique that you can use if you are working from photographs (and I have had to as my art skills are non-existent!).

As long as you ensure that you use a drawing program with layering capability, you can set your photo as the bottom layer and then create a new blank layer on top. Then all you do is draw on this top layer with a 3/4 pixel thickness pen in black over the main lines in the photograph (you don't need to have perfectly straight lines either). Then when you have completed this, you can remove the bottom layer (the photo) and colour fill between the lines that you have drawn following approximately the colours in the original photo. And hey presto you end up with some very cartoony backgrounds!

Just for your info, I ran up an example background that took me only 30 minutes to do (including sourcing the photo on the net, opening Paint Shop Pro etc.) and this shows how you can create backgrounds quickly for AGS games. The background is not complete though and I have only worked on a section of it - completing the entire background gives a better overall effect, but this will at least give you an idea. On top of this, you really don't need to be a decent artist - as long as you can trace lines using your mouse in PSP you have all the necessary skills...

I don't know how you would stand with regard to copyright infringement though... 

I can't see how to post the 2 images (the original photo and the layer I created) here, so if you're interested I can e-mail them to you (total size 230KB)...

[Hollister Man]

Thanks, if you want to e-mail them to allmen@rocketmail.com

I'm still considering this idea, but I may just make the demo up using my concept art, considering I feel the art is quite nice, but I can't seem to make it decent colored.

[Neutron]

hi, I would definately try using the 'poster edges' filter.  Basically it will give toon edges to your photo.  A way to control the result somewhat is:  go to layers> duplicate layer> run the filter on the duplicate>, then, when you have an area that is too posterized, just use the eraser tool to erase away that bit, and expose the original underneath it.  then merge the layers and save.