@Harmy: I am very much aware that flesh tones depend on the scene and lighting and have very much taken that into consideration when setting on a single setting for ESB, which is why I was in favour of the more bluish flesh tones in the wampa clip I posted before rather than the more balanced neutral colour grading that You_Too put up using photoshop, where Luke's flesh tone was too orange for his very cold surroundings IMHO.
Fair enough about the GOUT, I'm looking at the dvds and you're right, it is brighter than the dvd/blu-ray in a lot of places (or at least seems so due to its lack of contrast). If you increase the contrast to get the image looking fairly decent, the image is a lot of the time darker than the dvd/blu-rays. The only part of the GOUT I have familiarity with recently is Lapti Nek and looking at the footage i've got, after boosting the contrast, its definately going to need its brightness boosted in order to fit with the rest of the blu-ray/hdtv footage.
@msycamore: Fair enough, I definately agree with you about detail getting lost in the clipped whites and yeah, that is clearly visible in the blu-ray itself. That it is already present in the blu-ray is not in itself a reason not to increase the brightness a little more though if it improves the image overall, as I believe it does here, even taking into account increased white crush in certain scenes. Sorry, it seemed from what you posted before that you believed I was using a single setting to regrade Star Wars, which is pretty much impossible because its so inconsistent. Didn't mean to jump down your throat there, sorry about that.
msycamore, we're going to have to agree to disagree about needing a shot by shot correction to get any decent results. If anything, its the exact opposite IMHO, a shot by shot correction is a slippery slope if ever there was one. Only the cinematographers of these films would be able to do that with any real accuracy IMO and even then, his colour grading sensibilities may have changed over the years and he could choose to grade certain scenes differently, much like Peter Jackson and Andrew Lesnie did with FOTR EE blu-ray, which has a very different palette to the theatrical release, even after the green tint is removed. This may even be the reason why the Lowry colour grading is so different, the cinematographers and GL may have decided to change the colour grading to fit more modern colour grading trends, much like what happened with FOTR EE.
For somebody not involved in the actual production of these films to regrade them shot by shot using a source as poor as the GOUT as a reference and get them close to how they looked in the cinema? Little to no chance IMHO and that's of course assuming that the GOUT's colours/flesh tones are accurate, which for me personally is open to debate. The contrast was definately not that messed up in the cinema, I'm pretty certain of that. No, shot by shot regrading is definately not the way to go, at least for me. The Lowry masters minus the blue tint will do.
Msycamore, thanks for wishing me luck with this project and I hope that you will continue to provide feedback on clips i post in the near future and maybe even check out this release when I get round to uploading it. Who knows, you might be pleasantly surprised.