Hire a Pro. The whole ceiling will need patching and skimming and sanding. Very labor intensive, and high skill set needed. Don't screw up your hard work by doing any sort of texture again.

And I hope you tested for asbestos before you scraped it.

You can't just paint that. Without some sort of texture it'll look pretty bad. The gouges and holes need to be fill and sanded, as do the irregularities in the tape and bed, then it can be textured, there are several choices, hand textures are popular here, but spray textures are much easier and cheaper, again ... several different options in appearance there as well.

like Sophie said, it needs to be skimmed and sanded to smooth it out. Hire a drywall guy to come in and do it. He shouldn't charge more then a few hundred. Totally worth it. Skimming it with a smooth coat and then sanding is an art form and is time consuming. That's the whole purpose for texture. It hides the defects (taping, unevenness, divots, etc). You could always get the very lightest of textures. Hardly noticeable. Most new homes have it.

The entire ceiling will not need to be skim coated in order to texture unless it's in bad shape .. that's the purpose of texture .. to hide irregularities.

i'd go smooth and solve your problem for all time. and yes, hire a pro, they are wizards.

Thank you for all of the amazing replies. I'll be calling someone next week to get a quote. I know it's going to be expensive, as our living room is huge, but we also need it done in the kitchen, dining room, and entry. Taking down the popcorn was a nightmare and I honestly never want to touch our ceilings again. Ideally, I want the ceiling smooth with no texture. If I'm going to pay someone to do it, I might as well do it that way.

Another question, if anyone sees this. What's the likelihood that this can be repaired without having to cut this piece of the ceiling out? The skylight had a leak when we bought the house and left damage under it. We thought it was repaired, but it wasn't, so it's even more damaged now. We bought the house as is, so there are a lot of issues like this. Someone is coming out to fix it again within the next 2 weeks. Thanks!

The repair person will open that up for sure to see the damage and repair any wood damage. You will then have to replace that area of Sheetrock. Repair person can do it.

You did test for asbestos before scraping, right?

Chances are they will have to open up the ceiling to see where the damage. It can be repaired so that you won't even know they did. After it is repaired I'd wait before getting the ceiling patched, skimmed, sanded and painted to make sure the leak has been fixed permanently.

After going through the disruption, trouble and mess of scraping the ceilings I would not want any texture on it. Smooth is the way to go.

There was a fire in the living room and the entire room was redone in the 90's. I was told by many people that there wouldn't be asbestos in it, but we wore protective masks and were extra careful. We saturated the popcorn ceiling with water, so it came off pretty wet with no much dust at all.

We definitely won't fix that big patch under the skylight until it's repaired and we've had a big storm to confirm it's done properly. Skylights are a pain, but my husband loves them too much to cover them (we have 2).

A good drywall guy can give good suggestions. Really easy job for a drywall pro but hard homeowner diy type job. I'd do a light texture as smooth is tougher and more expensive but a full skim coat would make it look very nice also.

Have you heard of a troweled "Tuscan finish"? Anyone have pictures?

It depends on your location. Out West there is no such thing as a texture free drywall finish. On the East coast they wouldn't even know how or why to texture a wall. Texturing was done to speed up house building without having to properly prep the walls. It is easy to do when a house is empty but an absolute disaster to touch up or redo.

I am all for DIY but as others have said look on Craigslist drywall guys get paid buy the day and will knock that out by lunch time and for the $300 it just isn't worth it.

It looks as if you have already patched the seams so I guess go on Amazon and for $50 get yourself a wall sander with a vacuum attachment. It actually helps with a ceiling as it sucks itself to the ceiling giving your arms a break.

Get it as smooth as you can and then use a GOOD drywall primer to check your work. Go back and retouch areas of concern and prime again. Not rocket science but tedious and difficult if you have never done before. Also go to HD and buy yourself a 5 gal bucket of drywall mud for under $15 vs the overpriced pitch sold for $29 a quart. Add water and mix with a drill. Wipe your surface with damp rags and it will spread easier. Buy knifes from 3-at least 12" You are already at 1/2 the cost of paying someone but if you have a lot of rooms I guess there is a savings

Water damaged drywall means there is MORE damages on the opposite side as it had to soak through. It needs to be removed.

Good luck!

Unfortunately, it's not $300. We got a quote from some professionals in the area and they want $2,000 (plus $300 more if we don't remove the last little bit of popcorn ourselves). He said it will take 4-5 days to complete, just for the living room, kitchen, dining room, and entry. As of right now, it's still unfinished, since we don't have $2,000 lying around for the ceiling. We're not sure what our next step will be.

Not knowing your "style" have you considered covering the ceiling in something like a beadboard? Armstrong has one out in different colors specifically for ceilings and for DIY.

Or something like this

I just did my own ceilings sanded them down, primed, and painted. They aren't perfect but they are100% better then the dark nasty popcorn

I totally agree with Elizabeth B. You might try to see if you can get a local painter with references, say from a neighborhood newspaper, to quote you a day rate. We found a local painter to do the vaulted area in our house (living, dining, kitchen, entry) for, I think, $200 per day to sand & prime, then we finished with the paint. He finished that plus more in 2 days.

Save up the money to get it done right. And no it was definitely not going to be a few hundred dollars and done in a day as some suggested. You cannot just slap the mud on thick, it has to be done in thin coats and takes a number of days to do this.
But you really do need to have the skylight fixed so it doesn't leak or it will continue to damage more drywall. The damaged drywall will have to be replaced.