I don’t understand if the real color of the real movie is that we can see in the 2.5 or if is it more the 2.7 who have real colors ? Because in the 2.5 the picture is always yellow, but may be that is the natural color of the original movie (or a degradation of time on the pellicle). I have noticed the same thing with ROTJ 2.5.
I wonder if one day an official blu ray comes out, if the color would like the image of the 2.5 or more like the 2.7And when the 3.0 despecialized will come out, it will take the same color traitment has the 2.5 or the 2.7 ? (or neither of two ?)
The “real color” of the movie is a topic worthy of a million pages of discussion that will get us not much closer to a real answer.
2.5 was colored with the idea that the film references that were used had already been corrected to match the way the print looks. This turned out to be a misunderstanding, and the references images were far more raw than that. On top of that, technicolor prints have other issues and might not be considered perfect representations of the color, despite the fact that they have not faded.
Knowing this, I altered the color to make 2.7. I don’t claim that it is more correct, as references such as scanned print projects were used only loosely, and even those are graded by eye and feel. The goal was really just to undo a lot of the yellow/green effect that had been over-utilized based on the misunderstanding described above, as some of the shots stood out very strongly for me and I personally found those shots to be a little bit distracting, and not at all how I remembered the film (can of worms comment), but also to fit alongside ESB and Jedi despecialized, which had more natural tones. That said, plenty of people prefer Harmy’s 2.5, and it provides it with a rather pleasant ‘old film’ type of look.
The project eventually escalated to a shot by shot color adjustment project. I aimed for consistency, and sometimes achieved it. I tried to remove the yellow look, mostly to fit my own tastes and make it a bit more neutral. I did not counteract the very vibrant blues of the interior/exterior death star. I think it looks great as vibrant as it is, but it might technically be a bit much. And from the looks of a certain projects, it will probably be a bit more tame for 3.0.
On that note, look at Neverar’s color thread to see what SW 3.0 might look like. Harmy will be using it as a base for that project, though he could implement changes on top of Neverar’s.
No one knows the “real color of the real movie”, really. If an official Blu-ray comes out, it will be yet another interpretation of the real colors.
Yes, that’s the TLDR of it. I’m not actually too picky about color. As long as it isn’t as botched as the blu-rays, I will most likely be happy. Often in the threads containing people’s color experiments, I think the shots look great after the first adjustment or two. After that, there is usually another 5 pages on a given shot before moving on, but I think most is accomplished before those minute and never ending tweaks.
If a new blu-ray/UHD looked as good as the 1997 color, I would be happy.