I just spent my lunch hour playing with color correcting the sole image I could find of the condition of the original negative. It proved my theory. Using the tools available in video editing, I managed to come somewhat close to a decent result.
One of the biggest problems is that we are dealing with film to video conversion. We have several sources for what the image should look like thanks to the technicolor prints and the prints used for the various video transfers. We also have the 97 SE on video before Lowry got their hands on it. So we know it was possible, either to use film techniques to get to the original colors or that they used the color separations to restore things that couldn't be fixed. Either way, the colors in 97 when I saw it in the theater were not noticeably off.
Then enter Lowry and their digital color restoration. Reds, magentas, and dark greens are everywhere. Explosions that were white originally are now magenta. The pinkish hues of blaster flashes are also magenta. The grays of the death star are greenish, and most of the faces have taken on a reddish hue. These issues stem from incompetent color correction. The other issues with the digital transfers are easy to fix, it is the colors that drive me crazy. And this all stems from the rigid adherence to the original negative being the holy grail of restoration work. I've followed the subject for nearly 30 years and one of the keys to a good restoration is knowing what elements you have to work with and knowing when the negative is too far gone to use. A great many classics of the 50's and 60's that were filmed with color film (rather than technicolor) would never be restorable if you only looked at the negative. You have to look at everything you have a many restorations have taken what they could from the negative and used other sources to supplement. In many cases it is taking the cyan and magenta from the negative and the yellow from the color separation. With modern technology, these can be digitally aligned in ways that were not possible even 20 years ago. The Ten Commandments is one of the recent restorations that was done this way.
The color separations exist for Star Wars(ANH) so a proper restoration of the original version is fully possible.
But to what we have are the digital scans of the master, not the master itself, so we are left with a flawed product. The CYM/RBG balance is off. The question is, what has been lost? Is the output just misaligned or is it irrevocably lost. I'm hoping that they are misaligned, but if they are lost, hopefully it was a product of the scanning process and not the condition of he negative.
And this is not just an issue with the OT. The Phantom Menace suffers the same issue. The blues are all off. I thought it was just me, but I found some images that align with my recollection of seeing TPM in the theater. R2 and the Chancellor's guards are supposed to be blue. Brilliant blue, not muted dark to blue-green hues. And as many of you know, the initial offering home video of TPM suffered from bad colors, not to mention heavy cropping. The Blu-Ray improved things, but the colors are still off. I think TESB and ROTJ have suffered less than ANH and TPM.
There is one nice thing about ATOC and ROTS being digital, the colors are accurate. The colors of R2 and C-3PO in ROTS are dead on with their colors in the GOUT. R2's blue pannels are an intense blue and C-3PO is a pale brassy gold. Watching Empire of Dreams showed that to be accurate for the 1976 filming of ANH. So Lucas was at least consistent in making the props and costumes. So they and the flesh tones (which should be peachy, not brown or red) will be my guide.
I've been watching several different version of the GOUT. This morning I watched the recent capture of the JSC LD of ANH. Truly excellent. Except for some flaws with color that are inherant to that release, they are far superior to anything made from the Lowry version. In fact, I think this capture may be better quality than the DVD sourced GOUT. But I've come to the conclusion that every single version needs work. Ether dust and other artifacts like the JSC, DNR artifacts like the Definitive Edition LD and the 2006 DVD's, or serious color issues like all the versions sourced from the Lowry scan.
So far, the hands down winner for best overall color is the TR47 capture of the DE LD box set. It is not without its flaws and the runner up is the JSC which is a very close second with the 2006 DVD GOUT in a more distant third. The challenge is to fix what Lowry did and get those colors from the blu-ray.