@Hal 9000: That they look good to you is exactly the sort of feedback I was looking for so thank you.
With this release I am mostly trying to make Star Wars appealing to watch on a purely visual level, of course I am trying to get the film looking as accurate as possible to how it looked in the cinema but making it visually appealing supercedes that in my mind. If you feel that i've achieved that then that's great.
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@NeverarGreat: I can see where you're coming as far as the whites having a very slight touch of green in certain shots like the stormtrooper armour but there is also slight purple in the armour as well. There at times where there's a touch of purple in the shadow areas in certain shots as well. Howver both these issues are within acceptable grading variation limits IHMO, remember that Star Wars is a very inconsistent film colour grading wise.
I have experimented with getting rid of both the slight green and purple selectively and while those particular shots are 'improved' in the sense that the purple is reduced and the white of the armour are more 'white', the rest of the film that doesn't suffer these issues is adversely affected. Using a single setting is about striking a balance and i'm happy with the balance i've struck here, a touch of purple and green that's barely noticable in a few individual shots across the whole film doesn't bother me greatly.
These 'problems' could also be part of the optics of the film when it was shot, slight purple in shadows is not uncommon in photography depending on lighting conditions, in particular in bright sunlight like that shot with Uncle Owen. In You_Too's regrading thread one guy here says much the same thing: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Digging-up-those-blacks-using-the-STAR-WARS-Blu-ray-for-preservations/post/549794/#TopicPost549794
I do a fair bit of photography myself and I have found what he says to be true in my experience. As for the stormtrooper whites being slightly green, I believe the star wars has always had a slight green tint to it as a lot of the films shot at this time did from what i've seen so that doesn't bother me, so long as the whites from white light sources and the fleshtones look right to me.
I'm glad that at least you find all the shots an improvement on my previous settings, that's really the most important thing.
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@bttfbrasilfan: Thanks bttfbrasilfan! That 70's warm technicolor feel is exactly what i'm going for here. I did do something about the crushed blacks, the blacks are now substancially brighter than the blu-ray with a lot more shadow detail visible so all the crushed blacks have been removed to my satisfaction.
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@Funcha: As I said to NeverarGreat above, I have experimented with removing the purple from the shadow details and it has a detrimental effect on the rest of the film. I suspect a lot of it was part of the optics when the film was shot, especially that shot outdoors in the direct sunlight with Uncle Owen where the purple in his hair is a lot stronger.
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@poita: I have all the project files of my semi-specialised editions using the same program that has served me very well for colour correcting, editing, audio editing, adding transitions and finally encoding. If I need to be very very specific in terms of selective colour grading, I use photoshop like I did to correct the lightsaber colours and make them all consistent with my first semi-specialised releases.
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@bkev: It's great to hear that you like how this looks, calling it the perfect release for you is quite the compliment so thank you! Just to clarify though, do you mean that its perfect for you in terms of the colours/image dynamics from the screencaps or in terms of this release including the good additions/changes of the special edition while removing the bad additions/changes?
Lightsaber color/consistency will not an issue with this release, the colours have already been fixed and been made consistent, I fixed all that already with my first star wars semi-specialised release and I have kept all the source files with the corrections so that will be very easy to implement. That lightsaber screencap was taken straight from the blu-ray with just the basic regrading applied but not selective colour grading so it doesn't reflect how the lightsabers will look in the actual release. If that's your only complaint then its a good sign.