Star Wars Trilogy SE bluray color regrade (a WIP) — Page 7

The shots of Leia look wrong. Not the colors per se, but the fact that they bring out the heavy rouge makeup applied to Carrie Fisher’s cheeks and it makes her look like a china doll.

I know poita has said before that the negative transfer makes the makeup way too visible, and brings out the exaggerations that would come out looking much more natural after the image went through three extra generations to get to the release print. Should that be kept in mind, or does that go beyond the scope of color correction?

I based the Leia shots on Mike Verta’s grading for this shot, although I reduced the saturation and the reds, and removed the Technicolor green shift that was in the shot. Also Carrie Fisher is pretty pale skinned:

I personally feel it looks pretty accurate:

I actually disagree about these shots. Although it might appear they are bright or blown out, with crushed blacks, this is actually how these shots look on the Technicolor prints. All home video releases have been low contrast, making these scenes much dimmer than they actually were back in 1977 in a theatre. Also, the bluray has such black crush, that you can’t really get anything from the dark areas, except digital noise and artifacts.

Just for clarity, this is what the print looks like:

This is my regrade:

Here are two more improved shots:

Looks amazing! Incredible work. I know we are likely a ways off for ESB or ROTJ, but any rough idea yet when you think ANH will be ready?

Much better, Dr. Dre. Nice work.

I think I’ve managed to find the more accurate warmer colors for the Owen/C-3PO shot (note how the color artifacts on the sandcrawler and Owen’s coat have disappeared):

If you look at the lines in Owen’s shirt, they have a bit of a purplish cast in this shot. Might want to lose that if possible.

It’s difficult to get rid of, because the bluray is really full of these artifacts as you can see:

…but with some manipulation it’s possible:

Cheebo said:

Looks amazing! Incredible work. I know we are likely a ways off for ESB or ROTJ, but any rough idea yet when you think ANH will be ready?

Turns out it’s a lot of work, if you want to do this correctly, so it will be a while before even ANH is finished.

I’m very curious to see what the scene with Jabba will look like after your regrade. I like the concept of the scene, even if the execution is horrible with that CGI Jabba looking like he was (quite literally) pasted in. I doubt a color correction will make him look better, but it can’t hurt the scene at least. I’m really looking forward to your completed project!

Hagdorm said:

I’m very curious to see what the scene with Jabba will look like after your regrade. I like the concept of the scene, even if the execution is horrible with that CGI Jabba looking like he was (quite literally) pasted in. I doubt a color correction will make him look better, but it can’t hurt the scene at least. I’m really looking forward to your completed project!

I think Dre might have played around with that scene a little when he first got his tool working. It ended up looking somewhat like Harmy’s 97SE grading.

towne32 said:

Hagdorm said:

I’m very curious to see what the scene with Jabba will look like after your regrade. I like the concept of the scene, even if the execution is horrible with that CGI Jabba looking like he was (quite literally) pasted in. I doubt a color correction will make him look better, but it can’t hurt the scene at least. I’m really looking forward to your completed project!

I think Dre might have played around with that scene a little when he first got his tool working. It ended up looking somewhat like Harmy’s 97SE grading.

Ahh, cool. I’ll have to look it up then.

These all are looking really nice DrDre…good work!

Especially this one, now that you were able to get rid of the pesky magenta:

DrDre,

Is it possible for you to display what this shot will look like after your editing skills are done with it…Luke inside the Lars home?

This first screenshot is of the newly released DeEd V2.6:

And this is from TN1’s Silvers Screen release:

This whole scene, could use a bit of help.

I should be clear that the shot is completely unchanged from DeEd 2.5. Some of the color in the scene almost always looks really weird (mostly Owen’s face), but Harmy’s is one of the better versions of it in my opinion and the majority of the scene looks pretty natural. So I left it instead of making it worse. 😃

I think you chose one of the less problematic shots from that scene, relatively speaking.

Thanks for the praise! I will take a crack at that shot tomorrow, as I’m on a trip today.

Enjoy the time off, and have fun!

What I’ve found as I’ve worked on my own color regrade is that the shots of Ben when he first meets Luke are desaturated compared to the surrounding shots. That changes the moment they go to get C-3PO. It is the only spot I’ve found to be undersaturated when I compare it to the GOUT DVD and other sources. I don’t like the JSC because the colors seem more off than the Technicolor. C-3PO is positively orange in the first shot and from all the source material I have, he is supposed to be brassy gold (like you have him). The GOUT DVD is both higher resolution and has better colors (once you correct the brightness).

yotsuya said:

What I’ve found as I’ve worked on my own color regrade is that the shots of Ben when he first meets Luke are desaturated compared to the surrounding shots. That changes the moment they go to get C-3PO. It is the only spot I’ve found to be undersaturated when I compare it to the GOUT DVD and other sources. I don’t like the JSC because the colors seem more off than the Technicolor. C-3PO is positively orange in the first shot and from all the source material I have, he is supposed to be brassy gold (like you have him). The GOUT DVD is both higher resolution and has better colors (once you correct the brightness).

I think in many ways the JSC has more accurate colors than the GOUT, but the problem is the primitive techniques with which the source was scanned. This results in color balance issues, where there often is too much red in Star Wars (resulting in orange C-3PO), and too much yellow in TESB and ROTJ.

Here’s version of the Luke at dinner shot.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

Here’s another shot from the same sequence.

Funny tidbit: on the print the food in the bowl is actually orange/yellow. Good ol’ George probably thought people didn’t like yellow food, so he turned it into gray goo for the bluray release. Some of these changes are just weird.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

Looks better. But Owen’s skin and robe look a bit green. I don’t know why he looks so utterly bizarre in some of the 04/11 blu-ray shots in this scene.