Just to keep things clear… (SO MANY VARIATIONS NOW!) this is Dr. Dre’s version:
The top one in Neverargreat’s comparison was from my single pass regrade of SSE 1.5, before 1.6 was released.
Something interesting about this shot is how much of the “sky color” is reflected in the “sand color”. Getting a nice, deep blue sky nets an unusually blue sand, probably showing the sky shouldn’t be quite that blue in the shot?
Thanks for posting that shot, it’s great… in fact… it’s kind of NeverarGREAT! 😃
The sky was certainly intended to be quite gray, but in the actual photography it was probably on the blue side, like a normal sunny day. You can see the green tones in the sky of the SSE example reflected in C-3PO’s head, and on the oversaturated Blu-ray this turns him into a multicolored mess. However, it may be more true to the photography to have that blue sky reflection, it’s just that in the Tech references he’s quite monochrome in the desert because of the desolate look. I’m still not entirely happy with how red the sky is in my version, but it’s phenomenally difficult to change while retaining the proper blue of R2’s panels.
JEDIT: Reduced the reds! Updated images above.