- Don't use .PNG, i almost die while loading
- Don't use thick frame around pic, its useless and almost never nice
- Blur is like fire, if you know how to use it then do it (frame)
- That sun is fail sorry but it looks like small explosion, you are using bad light render (i thing this is render from PSP, yeah? try using PhotoShop if not already)
- When are you going to make screen-shot set LFS graphic to maximum even if your computer can't take it, you just need only one frame so get it in max details.
- There is a car, but i noticed it a few seconds after looking at pic. I don't know if its shoot of track or car... in second case the car should be in "image's focus", first thing that you will notice on picture.
- Lights on car are also badly rendered, try another effect generator
- Use more contrast, lest brightness - you are doing opposite
I know, I even cringed when I uploaded It looking at the sun, It was very disapointing, But It was my first time using GIMP, So please forgive the noobish effects..
That was max my friend, With LOD set to negative (Makes it look like it has more pixels in it or something)
The car was meant to be out of focus like that, I lined that up for about 5 minutes, It's meant to be zoomed at the city background but the car is suppose to be In It as well.
To understand how to edit a picture you have to understand how things work in nature - physics wise. This of course is because everything you want to do is to fix a screenshot to look like a real image taken by a camera. In some years when every racing game looks like NFS Shift or better, we will have not much to do in that aspect just like painters had not much to do first when cameras spread. Until that you may want to achieve a realistic look.
Doing that there are basically two things to do.
1. Compare both the screenshot and the same situation imagined in reality. Try to guess what would be different and look at photos with similar scenery.
2. To make a .jpeg of your imagination you will need many skills in picture editing. Learn by doing, watch tutorials if you are stuck or ask here on the forums.
I understand you want to use many effects on your picture but you will understand hopefully that won't work out really. That means for your picture:
The sun and light effects are needless. I guess your eyes don't hurt if you look at headlights/foglights directly on a clear bright day. You will easily figure out that these and the sun should not look equally bright.
Also concerning the headlights: These spotlights don't fit because they look as if they belonged to a round headlamp whereas the XFG headlights have a very square/rectangle form.
Don't try to imitate HDR lightning because in almost all cases it will be overused making it look like a blurry dream.
Comparing with real camera shots you will notice your overall picture is too light and thus also lacks contrast.
As has been pointed out that black blurry frame around the picture looks weird because it does not replicate any real effect of photographing.
I post here some of my screenshots too...not all of them, but a bunch of the most popular...
All the skin are done by me, except the pink XRT at the end (made by Kamikaze), and the green fz (made by AndrewS).
the purple FZ is a public skin, visit our website (link on first pic) to download it if you want.