Beautiful work! And you also answered my question in that video but only in a half-way. Was thinking more of... do you hunt for possible detail in the Special Edition prints in those shots intentionally degraded for the original film? Some of the shots in the desert between wipe and skeleton just have to be dupe material, the same with certain shots in the falcon on their ways to Alderaan.
Anyway, it's great that some can finally get to see that this shot always was dirty and grainy right at the source. We discussed this shot a few years ago here and some people obviously shook their heads at me when I tried to describe it: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Best-source-for-the-Mos-Eisley-speeder-pass-by-shot/topic/13924/page/3/
Tservo posted a great interview with Edlund of how the shot came to be...
How do feel about George Lucas going back to the old Star Wars movies and replacing some of your old special effects with new computerized improvements?
When I went to the premiere of the Special Edition at the Fox Village Theatre, George was there. I told George: "I've heard you changed a lot of things and there's all these rumors about reshooting the opening shot... It's your movie and you can do with it what you want. It's not like someone coming around 40-50 years later, colorizing Shirley Temple." and he said: "You know Richard, there's that shot of the landspeeder..." and he didn't have to say anything else, because there's this one shot that's such a stinker in Star Wars and I can't stand it. Gary Kurtz shot this plate of the landspeeder taking off in the desert and you could see the tires under it. We had to get rid of the tires. This is pre-digital and I tried to rotoscope the tires underneath it and tweak the animation of the rotoscope so it didn't vibrate. Then I very carefully repositioned the sand area adjacent to where the tires were supposed to be and put that in the area. I almost had it perfect. If I'd done two or three more takes it would have been perfect, but George had sent it to Disney and had them rotoscope it. They tried doing a color match but didn't quite get the match; it was a little on the pink side, but that's what wound up in the movie. I'd nudge anybody who I'd see the movie with at that point, so they look away from the screen.
I personallly find the entrance shot much worse (but only artistically of course)