This is one of the fucking ugliest backgrouds I have ever seen. Yeah, if you just glance at the water animation, it looks nice, but if you gaze at it with a little scrutiny for a few minutes, you'll begin to pick out the huge number of errors.
Not only is the sky the weakest attempt at a "nighttime" effect, but the "improvements" you said you made could not have done more than make this image worse.
Let's start with the stars. They're the star tube directly out of PSP7 or whatever version you have, so you lose about three points for laziness. All you had to do is, and pay attention here, use the "Lighten RGB" tool in PSP, which should be what you're using because I recognize those horrid stars, and just make one pixel as close to white as you can get (keep in mind to make a lot of the stars a lighter blue, not changing the tone to white or gray because stars just...don't look gray; they look white). If you're going to input a large number of stars, don't clutter them all so close together. It makes the sky look cramped, and usually results in the edges looking empty, which is apparent enough here to receive much less than a 5/5. Idiots and their lazy ass rating system annoy me.
Also, if there is a large quantity of stars on the image, most of themshould, in reality, be a lot less bright. If you go outside on a clear night (which is a damn near impossibility to accomplish in winter...at least, up here it is), you'll see only one of about every fifteen or twenty stars is actually a very bright white. The others are dimmer, more of a gray (but, as I stated previously, don't make them gray; keep them the same tone as the sky, but don't fucking change the color, just use the lightening tool and keep them the color that results from increasing the brightness on one pixel). On the brighter, whiter stars, add a pixel about five shades dimmer than the white pixel around each side of that white pixel. Do the same to the left side of the left dimmed pixel, the right side of the right dimmed pixel, the top side of the dimmed pixel, and the bottom side of the bottom pixel.
Moving on, I notice the sky is just a gradient. I know this is kind of a fad among you amateurs, and it's all well and good, but we all know that it requires absolutely no hidden talent whatsoever. Gradients are pre-rendered in damn near every "professional" program out there. I guess my only beef with the gradient-filled sky is that it is just that--a gradient-filled mass.
The water animation's loop is obvious from the get-go. You didn't do enough to make the loop smooth, and that'll definitely drop your score several points. Laziness is a bitch, is it not? I bet you'll agree once you scroll down a bit and check out your score, which I predict has already happened since laziness draws people away from reading everything I type.
And why the fuck has part of the ship railing taken on the water animation as well? It looks cool, but it isn't supposed to be there, I take it. You should, you know, review your image a little before chucking this steaming, soggy log of shit into my monitor. It doesn't smell too good in here anymore, so...do something about that.
Minor issue: the "ship" portion of this background is pallette-swapped to sky blue. It looks okay, but you should've used the "fill" tool and set it at about 20% opacity, so as not to make the background so monotone. The ship's original color, which I assume would be brown, should be somewhat visible.
All in all, I'd give you an incredibly generous 2/10. Don't take this personally, but instead read everything I just typed up and take the tips I gave you. I look forward to an improved version of this if you so choose to produce one.
