C3PX said:
I am with Octocrox on this one, I think this also accounts for the flipped audio channels on the 04 DVDs, As MCQuarrie's art seems to indicate a world in which the audio should be entirely screwed up. I knew LFL would never lie to us, they were all intentially made creative decisions in order to bring the films closer to Ralphs artwork.

Oh no, that was just a screw up :P I do think the lower mixing of the music was a creative decision by Ben Burtt though. I doubt the colors were purely a screw up though, because similar decisions about the colors were made on TPM. Plenty of movies nowadays use color tinting for dramatic effect, and I think that was what Lucasfilm was going for, bringing this closer to the "original vision" demonstrated in McQuarrie's artwork. Unfortunately the tinting job doesn't look that great...

Also, I doubt Lucas was personally responsible for the coloring. Somebody else probably did it and Lucas just okayed it.