That is definately better than the previous colour matching attempt but it is not indistuinguishable in terms of colour/image dynamics, the picture on the left looks fine but the picture on the right still looks unnatural in terms of fleshtones, Indiana’s eyes in particular look very bad on the right and not at all like the picture on the left. The only thing worse than getting the fleshtones looking unnatural is having the eyes looking unnatural.
I’ve always found what your colour matching tool can do very impressive but unless it can match the colours and image dynamics 100%, there is a margin of error of the algorithm making up colours/changing image dynamics that I personally would not be able to tolerate. If I were to create a release using that tool, I would never release it unless it was 100% accurate or the difference was so negligable that I could not tell the difference looking with my own eyes on my 30 inch monitor.
I just heard about this little difference of opinion and wanted to see what it was about. I can understand most of the posts, but this one was really off the wall. I’ve sat for the last 5 minutes trying to find some aspect of the two images that was different in terms of color. I can’t see a single difference.
I have to agree with DrDre on this one. Your correction is too blue. Yes, your fleshtones look great, but at the cost of the rest of the image. This has been very indicative of a lot of the corrections I’ve seen on around here. I’ve even had discussions with DrDre when some of his color corrections have seemed to favor yellow unnecessarily. It is easy, especially when you are faced with a color issue that you can clearly see and are trying to fix, to take it too far the other way. I don’t like the Despecialized Edition because I think Harmy overcorrected to remove the magenta tint in ANH. I’ve found many of my own corrections attempts to have gone too far yellow or blue when trying to fix the skin tones and other colors of ANH.
I’ve spent a lot of time, long before attempting color corrections on films, trying to restore old photos that have turned yellow or pink with age. The yellow ones are a case where the finishing coating has turned yellow with age, tinting the entire picture. I found, much to my dismay, that you can’t just pull the yellow and get a good result. The yellow tint obscures some of the natural yellow and removing it removes the natural yellow. So by removing all of the yellow tint, you have likely removed some natural yellow, particularly from the lighter areas.
Probably the most useful thing I have studied to try to teach myself color correction on films has been to study real life. I was as intent as many about making ANH yellow until I was in a meeting one day and actually looked at the faces across the table. I found that they were pinker than my mind had thought and their skin tones varied considerably. So don’t take anyone’s word, but take the time to go out and look at things in the real world. Find some white buildings in the sun and see what they look like. Look at people in a large hall, a classroom. Get a feel for the colors. Don’t let a feeling of yellow dictate how you remove the yellow. Find a way to remove it and have the result feel natural. Colors have to be adjusted carefully or you can easily have something that looks bad. And it might not look bad to you at first, but live with it and look at it critically. That is why we post screen shots - to get feedback as to how others feel it looks. When you have more than one person making the same observation, you might want to take another look at how you got your result, and how you can get the fix you want and make it better.