Info: Playing with AOTC theatrical color grading

Yep, I’m always playing with something new! 😄

Today is time to investigate Attack Of The Clones theatrical color grading; I resurrected the old Centropy SVCD for this purpose (baaad quality, but maybe the best theatrical version still available, until a proper 35mm scan will be done!)

Oh yes, it is really bad, with severe clipped whites, low resolution, cropped image and so on… but colors are “relatively” intact, somehow. A perfect match will, of course, have the same clipping problems, so for my test I used the HD luma, and tried to match only the chroma.

Result? In many scenes, the difference is negligible, or not very noticeable - this could mean that the HD retains the theatrical color there, untouched; but in other scenes, there is a lot of difference in the colors; the HD seems dull, where the theatrical colors “pop” up.

Top, regraded; bottom, untouched:

So, what’s the point? Is it the HD colors wrong? Is it the Centropy ones (which should reflect the theatrical) right? Who knows? What I know it that is just another fun experiment… and I must admit I like the regraded version a lot!

Motion tests gave overall good results, but still not perfect; to make a complete regrade a lot of work on sync is required, and the added scene could not be regraded, of course - but the colors there are quite close.

yotsuya said:
I would say that the ideal might be halfway between. Your adjusted version seems too green while the original seem too purple.

Yes, I think it could work better; the amount of one or the other should be tested, though; probably more theatrical.