Originally posted by: tellan
okay, I had a new way to come up with the atmosphere. find all the shots of tatooine with atmosphere haze added. the problem here is that the existing blue atmosphere haze is basically solid, not transparent so I've had to balance new haze, against blending with the blue already present.

It looks better, although I still think it stands out and catches the eye of the viewer a little too much (well, my eyes anyway). I don't think this is what you want, as you probably prefer the viewer to focus on what's going on with the spaceships in the foreground for the most part, while the background planetscape panoramas serve as a little extra eye candy to spice the scenes up.

I think adywan's dark, soft and faint haze works quite well though. It doesn't look like the atmosphere of the Earth, but that's OK since this is Tatooine, and the atmosphere still does have a stronger sense of realism to it I think. It complements the reddish brown colors in the rest of the image well, as a thicker blue atmosphere would also have left the planet surface closest to the viewer with a very slight, though visible, blue tint (and I, personally, don't think you should go that route -- too big a change).

I sincerely hope I haven't come across as pedantic by bringing this issue up, but after all, we are talking about the opening shot of Star Wars! In the end it can be a tough call, since this is where impressions of artistic vision and knowledge of physical reality have to blend with each other. For example, independent of your editing, the planet surface in these shots has never looked quite realistic to me, but in my opinion it still looks good! Also, the background stars wouldn't be visible with your regular camera if you were shooting these scenes in space, and as we all know there's no sound in space either, but I'm not going to ask you to modify or remove any of those! In the end it's a compromise and there are a lot of factors to weigh up against each other, and it's all up to you and how you want to see Star Wars. Again, I would like to say that I really enjoy seeing the results of your work, and besides, if I hadn't cared at all, I wouldn't have bothered to make these suggestions.