SilverWook said:

Have there ever been any good detailed articles on the actual restoration process?

Everything I recall seeing or reading 11 years ago was focused more on the special edition changes.

There was also quite a bit of detailed info about the restoration in the ILM "digital realm" book that came out a while back. I remember skimming through it at a bookstore a few yrs ago, and that was the first place I think I ever read about the infamous CRI dupe stock. One of the members of the Home Theater Forum read the book and paraphrased some of the info about the restoration (I'm sure he won't mind if I quote him here):

"I read about the restoration of "Star Wars" in the book "Industrial Light and Magic: Into the Digital Realm". I don't have the text in front of me so I have to rely on memory.

Three-fourths of "Star Wars" negative went threw a chemical bath to clean it, then wet gate printed to get rid of scratches and the remaining dirt.

One-fourth of the movies negative was to damaged to do that too, so the footage was replaced in one of three ways. One involved replacing the footage from an interpositive made of "Star Wars" in 1985 for the video release. Another was used if the damaged footage was an effects shot. ILM dug out the original plates of those shots and sent them to Pacific Title, who recombined the plates with an optical printer (I guess ILM couldn't do this themselves because they had gotten rid of all of there optical printers.) The third involved ILM scanning the footage in and correcting it in the digital realm.

So to answer your question, lets say approxatly 5/6 of "Star Wars" was restored photochemcially and 1/6 digitally (and this only done if the footage couldn't be photochemically restored for some reason). Of course, this dosen't take into account all of the new CGI that Lucas added.

Incidently, the audio restoration involved Ben Burtt digging out all the original audio tapes of "Star Wars" and remixing them digitally at Skywalker Sound. (I remembering hearing that in a video promotional feature on the Special Editions at the time)."

Knightmessenger said:

ANH in '04, did they go back to a print with just Mulholland in it and make a new Jabba or just paste it over the '97 one? Some of the CU frames of Han Solo that were cut out in the Greedo scene to make way for the overhead shot were reinserted back in for the dvd. The words "Yes" and "I" were put back to "bet you have."
(The '97 Greedo scene can be found on the deleted scenes video of the Episode I dvd if you want to check)

So don't tell me Lucas can't restore footage that was removed in '97, he already did. I just wish there was an easier way to show or explain this.

I agree with that, Knightmessenger, and feel the same way you do.