I have a wallpaper that seems unfinished to me.
Help!
I need opinions and ideas on how to improvise this wallpaper and make it better.
If you think this wallpaper doesn't need any more work and is finished, then please tell me so because I will post it under the gallery.
Thanks a bunch guys!

click here to view the wallpaper

Hi moonstruckstephanie

I'll structure this in the form of the Minitokyo Policy, and just do a run through of the most basic things that need to be done

- Extraction
The extraction doesn't look well done. If you look at the hair on the left character the outline of her hair disappears at the top, yet appears towards the bottom curve. This should be fixed up a bit better though it's not a big problem. The ends of the hair are also quite chunky.

I'm pointing these things out for your next wallpaper in the future too :P For instance, a more effective method of extraction, or perhaps what you will extract next time (keeping outlines or removing them completely)

For good extraction I recommend searching up pentool tutorials because the pentool by far provides the cleanest extraction I know of. You may try the magnetic/ polygonal lassoo, but I personally dislike them because I don't get quite as much control over them

- Background
The Policy does specify non-modified stock photos as being "low effort" (more like meaning incomplete, not that nobody bothered ). At the moment the stock photo doesn't look very modified, and perhaps looks a bit too real for the characters.

- Integration of foreground and background
The characters are chibi like and warrant a chibi-like background. I think this is where you'll need to consider how to make the beach background a little more cartoonlike rather than something realistic So you will have to modify the background anyway and solve the stock photo problem

- quality of the scan
It's a good idea to not filter scans :P But just by looking at this one the quality might be better if the scans weren't transparent. They also don't have very lines (probably the fault of the original scan or perhaps you did some resizing ) Again, this can be solved by drawing over the lines with the pentool.

Away from the crits, the colours are generally really well done and everything matches quite harmoniously. So it's just the technical side that needs to be worked on :P

I hope that has brought some matters to your attention and the Policy will be there for you any time

Well, you need more work on it. You need to work on the extraction and make the characters more visible.. Plus the background looks a little too real...