FanFiltration said:
I'm working on this edit again after an unwelcome interruption...
I also like the green tint on the Klingon ships. I think the color scheme used on the D-7 in Star Trek VI looks best. That model had a great paint job. The metallic used in TMP looks all wrong.
FF
Sorry to hear about another unwelcome thing in your life. Seems to happen a lot to you. :-(
Here are some more examples of my white balancing done on the DE:
Keep in mind, this is just making it so the windows/running lights are "white" and space is "black". The color comes naturally when you do this. As you can see, the colors are different from shot to shot originally, so some tweaking might still have to be done to make them match.
As for the shooting models, here is my white balanced version compared to the paint job at the time of the film being shot:
Originally the model was green, as seen in this picture of the model during the filming of TMP. However when it came time to do Kronos One in Star Trek 6, they repainted the model to give it some more flair:
The bottom shot is color balanced to the same windows as the TMP shots. This is partly where we get the "grey klingon ships" from.
More research shows that a similar thing happened to the original D7 model. It was green with some grey shading, but bluescreen spill gave it a blue-grey look, which the home model kits gave as its real color. The crew took the original studio model and repainted it for the Phase II show, but like all of those, they scrapped it and made more detailed one for TMP.
However, the grey color was so engrained into viewers that they repainted the model to this color when they took it to the Smithsonian!
The Remastered version of the Original Series ended up making the D7 a grey color too!
If I find a picture of the shooting model in its original color, I'll add it here too.
EDIT: Apparently they painted a copy of the AMT model for Roddenberry to keep the same colors as the shooting model:
The Polar Lights version is a subdued shade of these colors, as explained in this article.