CatBus said:

Certainly this was markedly different than I'd seen Star Wars look recently, and I was also taken by the washed out appearance of Tatooine, which I think reaches its peak as the sand crawler crests the dune after the "Look Sir, droids" scene. That scene practically looks as blown out as a Hoth scene it's so bright. But then I watched it again thinking that this was the desert with the sun glaring down all the time. Suddenly Uncle Owen's squinty eyes fit a lot better, a lot of stuff did. It's just blindingly bright out there!

According to Mike Verta that scene always looked fuzzy and washed out in original prints, and in fact there are a handful of shots which always looked like grainy dupes - that shot, the infamous "landspeeder blob," and the shot of the Rebel fighters flying towards the camera before "All wings report in."