yotsuya said:

Regardless of who did it, it is messed up and I've seen other things worked on by Lowry that share the same skewed color pallet.

But Lowry was right about one thing, the Tunesia scenes do have a lot of extra dirt. The Legacy restoration has found the same indications on the technicolor print - filled with mysterious yellow dots - that there is something up. I think many people underestimate just how insidious sand can be in the desert. It gets everywhere. And some of it is super fine.

I guess we'd better blame Lucasfilm for the piss poor job of scanning and color correcting. I have no issue with grain cleanup and reduction. I like clean images unless the grain was an artistic choice by the production team. And from what I've seen of the restorations being done by our own OriginalTrilogy.com members, 1080p is higher resolution than anyone outside of Hollywood has been able to see movies in. 4k starts to reveal things that the audience was never intended to see that shouldn't be left. Or 8k for 70 mm. I think they are great resolutions for scanning and preserving, but not for viewing. I already see too many flaws in Star Wars at 1080p.

The yellow dots have nothing to do with dirt as such, they are common in aging, particularly in comps. We see it all the time in restorations of many, many films unfortunately.

Also remember the home releases and even the broadcasts of the SE are quite different to the theatrical prints.