OK, so I decided to take the time and reply to this one by one.
First of all, thanks for the typically thorough analysis, hairy_hen :-) Please try and have the second half as soon as possible, I really want to have this done ASAP.
hairy_hen said:
00:02:27 — White level too low compared to the two previous shots; inconsistency very noticeable in stars and somewhat in rebel ship. Brighten image to match, or matte out ship and brighten stars separately if necessary.
I'll try.
00:03:10, 00:03:29 — White level blown out in background for both shots.
I can't really do anything about that.
00:03:42 — Red, yellow, and blue lights in background extremely oversaturated throughout this shot. Mike Verta pointed out that they absolutely should not 'pop' out in this way, because it is photographically unrealistic to be so bright through all the obscuring smoke. However, they must be toned down separately without affecting the laser blasts.
00:03:45 — Red lights in background oversaturated.
00:03:52:05 — Background lights behind stormtroopers again extremely oversaturated and pop unnaturally. Will again affect laser blasts unless treated separately.
00:03:53:19 — Red lights behind rebels again very oversaturated and photographically unrealistic. Quite distracting.
They say that a picture can say more than a thousand words, so here goes:
I know it's still not perfect but it's the best I could do.
00:03:56:11 — Though lasers and flash frames seem appropriately coloured, the explosion on the wall at right of frame still has a very ugly pink appearance. In the 2004 version it was outright purple, so the removal of magenta throughout most of the movie did not completely succeed in correcting this.
I'll give it a shot.
00:04:18:15 — Flash frames throughout this shot are still nasty pink rather than red-orange like they are elsewhere. (See above comment for explanation.) Laser blasts also look strange and oversaturated.
As you can see in the last video, I fixed the lasers (they were all recomped, so I inserted them from GOUT) but the flashes are that colour in the GOUT and even in the I.B. print reference.
00:04:41 — Red reflection on R2 appears strangely 'clipped': flat and without nuance of detail. Same goes for red light above Leia at 00:04:54.
This has been discussed before and I don't think I can fix it.
00:06:47 — Noticeable garbage matte around escape pod.
I left that on purpose since it doesn't really have defined edges, so it's more of a glow and it's always been that way.
00:07:07 — Stars disappear around escape pod and are slow to reappear after it has moved on.
This was already on my list. Check out the last video.
00:14:22 — Blue panel on escape pod is missing nearly all of its colour, appearing dull grey instead.
I did put the blue back (it was removed in the BD) but it got this appearance due to the colourtiming. I think I'll leave it as is.
00:24:27 (timing approximate) — Noticeable shift in brightness of the left sun near the beginning of this shot.
I don't see it. And even if I did, this comes directly from the GOUT, so I'd have to assume it's the way it always was.
This is more of a general comment than specific, but starting around the time Ben finds Luke (around 28 minutes in, and going until the end of the scene), most of the shots still look too desaturated. I recall the Technicolor image posted by Mike Verta having significantly stronger yellow levels than anything seen here. Also, Ben's cloak often looks too dark, closer to black than brown.
This scene is a bitch to colour correct and I've redone it at least six times to get it to look acceptable. Also, in the scans it does look a bit different than on that screen photo posted by Mike. I think I'll just leave it as is.
00:32:02 — I couldn't catch the exact timing, but early in this shot there is a white flash to the right of frame, which looks out of place amid the clean appearance elsewhere.
As it has the same colour as the lightsabre element and it appears in Puggo Grande as well, I'm pretty sure it is some error made in the making of the lightsabre effect, so that's why I restored it.
When Luke ignites the lightsabre, there seems to be a 'halo' around the blade. Not sure if this is due to compression artefacts or if the GOUT element is interacting strangely with the rest of the image. I don't recall seeing it before.
This could be due to the compositing of the GOUT sabre into the SE footage. I can't really do much about it.
00:36:39 — This shot of Vader appears oddly desaturated and dull grey. In the previous workprint, this shot had a noticeable green cast to it, which is now gone. Which is correct?
I checked and it's not quite as green cast in the IB reference, so I must have changed it on purpose somewhere along the way.
00:39:47 — White levels appear a bit blown out in this shot, particularly in the reflections on the landspeeder.
Again, not much I can do.
00:41:51 — There is a lot of frozen grain and/or compression artefacts in the sky in this shot. The stillness of it is distracting.
This bothered me as well. Already fixed it. (It's not in the last video - that's still the old version).
00:50:51:01 — Though brief, the pink/purple colouring to this explosion is noticeable. The rest of the frame isn't so bad, though. This happens a couple times earlier in the shootout, also, but I couldn't catch the exact timings.
I'll try.
00:54:19 — Death Star's laser blast seems to lean too much towards blue-green in this shot, rather than just being green. Death Star itself has a slight pink tint, which looks . . . odd.
This is done acording to the IB reference.
00:54:25 — Creatures on game board seem oversaturated with pink and purple; inconsistent with other shots. Would require separate adjustment to avoid affecting lightsabre.
I don't think I'll be redoing that, I think it looks ok. I did get rid of the horrible GOUT ones in the 2nd shot from that angle though and recreated the effect to get the positioning of those creatures to the way it was.