doubleofive said:
Ady was correct in his statement, that the SPECIAL EDITION elements are locked in at 2K at best, including the digitally recomposited shots.
Wait…but in Industrial Light and Magic – Into the Digital Realm by Mark Cotta Vaz https://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/2017/08/22/return-of-the-force/, it says that most of the unaltered special effects shots were recomposited optically/photochemically using the same equipment as in 1977/80/83 - “In a ironic touch, the old optical printer technology’ used to create Star Wars but abandoned years later in ILMs conversion to digital technology’ would be utilized again to restore the many wipes, the skip frames, and the rest of what Pacific Title vice president Phillip Feiner called ‘the bread and butter opticals.’ Pacific Title’s work involved taking the original elements from Lucasfilm and recompositing them, utilizing the company’s eleven state-of-the-art optical printers. With modern lenses and the latest, best Kodak film stocks, the old-fashioned printer technology delivered new comps boasting ‘a boost in resolution and color saturation’ according to Feiner.”
If they were recomp’d physically in 1997, then theoretically they should be native 4K in the 2019 master, right? I’m confused.