that's the point. restoring back to original state
you argument of
Fix the colours, after all picasso would have used a more vibrant red, if it was on his pallet.
doesn't hold water. that's not what people are doing. the DE LD is the best example of this.
compare the color values of this against, a mid 80's VHS of the film, the 93 THX VHS release of the film, the 97 SE VHS release of the film.
the SE is oversaturated, no one ever denied it wasn't.
however, the DE LD, which I, amongst others has used as my capture source, is tremendously bleached and faded in comparison to the earlier VHS releases. so which is correct? which commercial release of the film has the best color?
you don't know, I don't know. we never will know because the original film deteriorated to such an extent we can't see the original movie film strip and see for ourselves. all we can do as videophiles is color correct our capture as best we can using the equipment we have and logically apply algorithims to arrive at a finished product.
as always, we must use things we know to be white and pure red as guidelines for the rest. this is subjective but there is nothing we can do about that. we aren't intentionally altering things, we are trying to get the color values back to where we 'think' those values should be.
it's not revisionist, hell by that guideline you've stated, then all of the restorations everyone has ever done to Star wars and released on DVD-R for people to enjoy are null and void altered revisionist editions, because the color isn't right.