I removed all the blanket yellow tint and was left with the colours that you see in my regrade. I appreciate that you think I have removed too much yellow but I can very clearly see that that is not the case, I can see that with pretty much 100% certainty.
Well, in that case you shouldn’t trust your eyes, but the numbers. As the RGB values don’t lie. There’s an overabundance of magenta all over the frames you posted in places where it definitely shouldn’t be (as the above complation makes clear visually). This is a mathematical certainty.
This feels to me like a case of you shooting the messenger, blaming me for how the blu-ray transfer looks under the blanket yellow tint, which is completely out of my control. The Titanic looks much more conventional colourwise under the blanket yellow tint but I did exactly the same as I did here, just remove all of the blanket yellow tint.
And your Titanic looks great, no doubts there. However, if you simply look at the compilation I posted above, there’s no doubt your Raiders regrade is magenta shifted in the brighter areas. This has nothing to do with the bluray colors.
I don’t think there’s much point going round in circles here DrDre. You were working on your own version of Raiders of the Lost Ark right? That’ll be your opportunity to regrade the film to your preferences with a more yellow colour scheme and then everybody will be able to choose between both our releases. I’ve moved onto other projects now.
There’s no circles, it’s magenta. If that’s your purpose, more power to you. While I too have a tendency to respond with irritation in the face of criticism (initially, these things tend to bug me, such that I usually fix the problem eventually), I’ve also found these discussions generally lead to a better result, as sometimes others notice things, you may have missed. You’re free to ignore me of course. That’s fine by me, but left as is, this regrade is not up to your usual standards (IMO of course).
I am glad that you like the Titanic release but the fact that you like the look of that release and not this one is completely making my point about shooting the messenger.
You think there is too much blue and magenta after removing all the blanket yellow tint, fair enough. That does not change the fact that it is there after removing all the blanket yellow tint.
I disagree. You are taking yourself and the methods used out of the equation. For sure, a method, in this case curves adjustment, which produces good results on one source, does not have to work work equally well on another. However, there are other methods that can be used. Curves adjustment can only get you so far (simple example: you cannot independently adjust hue and saturation with curves adjustment). In this case you wanted certain skin tones, but in order to achieve this, you had to compromise (too much I think) in other areas. What I’m saying is, that you can get the skin tones you are after, while avoiding color casts in other parts of the frame. This is what I’ve done with my regrades, even though you might prefer a different color palette. In my case I often first match the bluray to a reference source I like, and start manually adjusting the colors from there (For example in this case I first matched the bluray to a specific shot of the WOWOW broadcast, and then optimized the color balance for all the other shots). This way you can obtain colors that are impossible to obtain with curves adjustment.
Maybe the print or digital negative they used to colour correct the blu-ray shot by shot had a little bit of red-fade (like all the 35mm print frames of Raiders of the Lost Ark i’ve seen out there) and that made them feel the need to add all the yellow to try to counterbalance that and give the film a more conventional orangey look? I don’t know but the purpose of this release in particular was to remove all the blanket yellow tint, not compromise like I have in previous releases and only remove it in part.
Like I stated earlier, you don’t need to compromise if you change your methods (when necessary).
The moral of the Kino story is that its impossible to make everybody happy, so the most important thing is to make sure you as the releaser are happy. That said, its important to always listen to feedback, just as it is important to understand that its not always necessary or even advisable to act on said feedback. In the case of this Raiders of the Lost Ark release, I am very happy with how it turned out, but i’d be lying if I said I didn’t expect resistance after seeing what the film looked like with all the blanket tint removed.
Yes, but this almost certainly isn’t what the negative looked like, and it is thus not THE look of the film without the blanket tint, it is a version. It is a consequence of applying a single curves adjustment to an entire film that was color graded on a shot by shot basis. Both the bluray and the WOWOW broadcast are based on the same scan of the negative, but they both have a completely different color palette, which are different from the 1981 theatrical prints:
Bluray:
WOWOW:
35mm LPP:
The colors of these releases cannot simply be transfered to the other with a single curves adjustent, or any other single color adjustment for that matter (although more advanced techniques will produce better results). Yet, the bluray can be almost perfectly color matched to the other two sources (not with curves adjustment mind you).
Bluray matched to WOWOW:
Bluray matched to 35mm LPP:
Either of these color matches could be the starting point of a regrade to remove the bluray’s blanket yellow tint, without having to do a shot by shot correction (since neither of the other releases has a blanket yellow tint, although this shot is probably not the best starting point), and the end result would be totally different from using the unadjusted bluray as your starting point. So, to me the argument in regards to your regrade, that this is what the bluray looks like without the blanket yellow tint is flawed, because it only represents one of many results produced with what is probably not the best methodology.
Either way, I’ve said my piece. It’s your work, so the most important thing is, that you’re happy with it. 😉