In both 'A Night Out' and 'Reconnected', the backgrounds in those games are from photos I find from free use sites (commercial included!) and I edit heavily in GIMP.
For 'Those We Keep Close' I considered commissioning a background artist, but it wouldn't match the style of the past two games and I decided to keep doing what I am doing with my techniques improving overtime.
When making backgrounds, my usual method is:
- resize/crop
- apply desaturation
- apply filters
- edit brightness, contrast, white balance, etc.
There are times however where I go in and actually edit the backgrounds themselves. This can include removing distracting objects, people, signs, etc. I've taken an entire mornings and evenings just to get a single background just right.
This time around, I am pushing to use some of my own photos. The backgrounds above are from photos I've shot and edited. They'll be used in my next title~