SilverWook said:

http://www.blam1.com/StarWars/EmpireStrikesBack.htm

I like that one a lot.

I believe this is what you gentlemen are looking for?

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/HTcRQGzEg57JlIcraPYdETpYxiVQwVMPNeXM7jD1id8?feat=directlink

People with a google account should be able to download the full sized picture. (958×1323 pixel – 739KB)

If I may, I think this looks like it fits better with the "Grande" cover

http://cf2.imgobject.com/t/p/original/jDBZ4bcvtbNk3ZXVS0xf3yzSuZ6.jpg

Leonardo said:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/HTcRQGzEg57JlIcraPYdETpYxiVQwVMPNeXM7jD1id8?feat=directlink

People with a google account should be able to download the full sized picture. (958×1323 pixel – 739KB)

That is gorgeous.  I like it because it looks like a real artist painted it.

jerlgrain said:

Did you ever happen to spot those veritcal ghosting lines in your original data/encode? Just curious.

OH, yes... here is the order of operations:

1. uncompressed original capture - they aren't there.
2. uncompressed color-corrected files (from Adywan) - they aren't there.
3. uncompressed upper-right spec removal - they aren't there
4. uncompressed resize/border addition - looks like they appear first here
5. compressed encoding for DVD - they are there

So they appear to be an artifact of resizing and adding the border.  Since I did both of those in a single step (in Vegas), I don't know whether the resizing or the border addition caused it, but it is probably one of those two operations.

SilverWook said:

Nice finds, Leo! The second one is from the '81 reissue, IIRC. I got a giant poster of that from the old fan club for renewing my membership back in the day. I think mine has a silvery border or something. I really should frame that big sucker some day before I'm old!

It's the '82 reissue poster, the '81 is very similar and used the same Tom Jung artwork but the logo is different between them. I recall sending you guys a collection of SW-poster scans, both of these are among them and are in very nice quality to make a great looking cover, I can reupload them for you Puggo if there's need for it.

Man, I hate copyright information... Anyways, covers for PG and PSB can be found here: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/My-Star-Wars-covers/post/619096/ Let me know if there are mistakes, I spent hours straight to get these ready. Hope you like them, enjoy.

jerlgrain said:

That is great news they are not in your original capture and steps 2 and 3. Any chance you may redo 4 and 5 in another fashion to see if they can be eliminated?

Not right now - too many other projects in the pipeline.  What I will do is watch out for it in ROTP, and if I am able to figure out what happened and how to avoid it, I'll go back and try it on PSB.

jerlgrain said:

Any chance you may redo 4 and 5 in another fashion to see if they can be eliminated?

 Hopefully, sometime in the future, we'll get AVCHDs, or whatever the kids are into.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

jerlgrain said:

That is great news they are not in your original capture and steps 2 and 3. Any chance you may redo 4 and 5 in another fashion to see if they can be eliminated?

Not right now - too many other projects in the pipeline.  What I will do is watch out for it in ROTP, and if I am able to figure out what happened and how to avoid it, I'll go back and try it on PSB.

Your letterbox mask graphic may just be the culprit here. I have no idea how this works, but I gather you made the custom "letterbox" mask as some sort of graphics overlay. Is it possible your black mask graphic isn't 100% clean/empty inside?

I get this in Photoshop a lot, when pure white isn't pure white and it isn't possible to spot on my monitor. There may be differing levels of gray in the white as residue of sloppy image editing or cut'n paste. When I overlay something like that on top of an image, the result is similar to what I see on the screencaps, and only apparent with elevated brightness/contrast levels.

Thanks for the ideas.  I built the mask using a combination of functions in Vegas.  I can't remember now whether I just used 8 applications of "cookie cutter", or whether I built the mask and then did the bluescreen thing.  The latter is what I did in PG, but my aging brain cells are already hazy on which way I did it for PSB (I know, that's pretty sad).

In any case, I'll go back and have a look - see if I can see anything that sheds any more light.

Cover preview:

Good point Wookiee, I'll find something better.

We just like you so much, Wookums!

Couldn't quite make Vader work, so I chose an alternate:

I hope Puggo likes it.

It looks great, boba feta!