Hello again after...(checks calendar)...7 months!
There's been progress, unfortunately not too much. I'm halfway through the film, but I'm continually learning and making improvements to my technique along the way. On that note, I have taken advantage of the 30 day trial of Adobe Speedgrade and made a LUT! It has about a dozen secondary color adjustments within it, fixing most of the global problems with the blu-ray in a single convenient package. I use the Luther.LUT with a curves adjustment before and after it in Premiere Pro. The first curves adjustment brings the highlights in the Superwhites down to legal levels, then the LUT is applied and then the final adjustment brings the highlights back up to proper levels. The good news is that there's more highlight information than I originally thought, and it's easily accessible with the curves adjustment. Here's the LUT file for those of you who want to experiment:
https://mega.nz/#!ndMg1Q4S!ro5BIbfxhJMyrjcMTGzHrD0ZYT8PmhvBlTPPJf-3XvQ
And some comparisons showing it in action with the curves adjustment:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/130898/picture:0
One of the issues in the Blu-ray is that some of the mid-highlights are shifted green, whereas other areas in this region are shifted red. I've done my best to normalize these shifts which are clearly visible in the Tantive corridors. The oversaturated magentas are now within manageable levels, and the red lights in the last comparison which were blown out have been brought down a bit throughout the film.
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/130901/picture:0
Here you can see the color shifts in the highlights, specifically in the stormtrooper helmet vs body and in the lights beside the door, which have been normalized and brought back down to legal limits. In the next comparison, the blues which had been boosted in the Blu-ray have been brought back down, and finally the oversaturation in the greens of the final shot has been dealt with somewhat.
I'm definitely using this LUT going forward, and perhaps even going backward to apply it to some of the first reel.
So again, sorry about the apparent lack of progress, but there's a whole lot going on right now behind the scenes, mostly work correcting the HUNDREDS of places in the Blu-ray where colors are simply gone and I need to pull color information from other sources entirely.
The work continues!