Certainly a lot better 😃 still a little too saturated for my taste, but the colors themselves look good. But there seems to be a bit of splochiness in both the uniform and the walls.
Deleted
It’s fine. 😃 Here’s my adjustment. It needed a red boost in the darker tones, and I’ve made it a little brighter. Somehow the eyes look more alive with the boosted blue tones, compared to some of the earlier attempts, but I think this is the one for me:
I don’t have that exact frame, but how is this?
I think it’s very consistent with my latest grading, so not surprisingly I think it looks great! 😃
It’s fine. 😃 Here’s my adjustment. It needed a red boost in the darker tones, and I’ve made it a little brighter. Somehow the eyes look more alive with the boosted blue tones, compared to some of the earlier attempts, but I think this is the one for me:
This looks the best in terms of skin tone that I’ve seen so far.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
It’s fine. 😃 Here’s my adjustment. It needed a red boost in the darker tones, and I’ve made it a little brighter. Somehow the eyes look more alive with the boosted blue tones, compared to some of the earlier attempts, but I think this is the one for me:
Thank you for being opened minded to everyone’s input… this is looking outstanding.
There’s a ton of experience here, so it would be foolish to ignore good advice 😉. Also, it’s a lot more fun this way…
Deleted
Deleted
The problem is not in the algorithm, but in the quality of the reference. …
So, if the reference is of high enough quality, the algorithm can probably reproduce it, to a high degree of accuracy. …
The algorithm is in a sense a form of automated curves adjustment. … The curves are adjusted, by matching the cumulative probability distributions for the red, green, and blue channels.
If the source wasn’t damaged as much as is the Star Wars Blu-ray (crushed, blown, stretched, noised), that would be half-the-battle won. Perhaps a uniform (read “simple”) prep to roughly “straighten the picture” might lessen your need to tweak so much.
I took the Blu-ray picture through 2 passes of JPEG-DNR (1st low, 2nd high) to reduce that awful Lucas-noise™ on everything (no, those aren’t age spots on Tarkin's skin; Luke has them, too) while minimizing edge blurring (multiple “lower” passes do better than one “maximum” pass) . .
and an R-G-B contrast adjustment (to a rough approximation of the reference) while setting an upper & lower headroom for the crushed & blown picture . .
That’s it! Simple settings, quick to do, and now it’s prepped (for your regrade) . .
Actually, the prep-result looks amazingly good, with colors magically coming close to on-the-set reality. (The way it was messed up, the entire Blu-ray should be dealt with this easily.)
And, no, I didn’t cheat. Check out this sequence comparison with a full-size area for close inspection. I included an extra column to show the result if DNR is skipped. SPOILER: the noise gets noticeably worse (!) because normal contrasting, needed to bring the picture back, emphasizes that, too.
Top-row is the Blu-ray; Middle-row is JPEG-DNR; Bottom-row is contrast & headroom adjustment:
I wonder if the full-size prepped picture, run it through your regrade process, would come out looking more (or exactly) like your reference picture of choice?
The problem is not in the algorithm, but in the quality of the reference. …
So, if the reference is of high enough quality, the algorithm can probably reproduce it, to a high degree of accuracy. …
The algorithm is in a sense a form of automated curves adjustment. … The curves are adjusted, by matching the cumulative probability distributions for the red, green, and blue channels.If the source wasn’t damaged as much as is the Star Wars Blu-ray (crushed, blown, stretched, noised), that would be half-the-battle won. Perhaps a uniform (read “simple”) prep to roughly “straighten the picture” might lessen your need to tweak so much.
I took the Blu-ray picture through 2 passes of JPEG-DNR (1st low, 2nd high) to reduce that awful Lucas-noise™ on everything (no, those aren’t age spots on Tarkin's skin; Luke has them, too) while minimizing edge blurring (multiple “lower” passes do better than one “maximum” pass) . .
and an R-G-B contrast adjustment (to a rough approximation of the reference) while setting an upper & lower headroom for the crushed & blown picture . .
That’s it! Simple settings, quick to do, and now it’s prepped (for your regrade) . .
Actually, the prep-result looks amazingly good, with colors magically coming close to on-the-set reality. (The way it was messed up, the entire Blu-ray should be dealt with this easily.)
And, no, I didn’t cheat. Check out this sequence comparison with a full-size area for close inspection. I included an extra column to show the result if DNR is skipped. SPOILER: the noise gets noticeably worse (!) because normal contrasting, needed to bring the picture back, emphasizes that, too.
Top-row is the Blu-ray; Middle-row is JPEG-DNR; Bottom-row is contrast & headroom adjustment:
I wonder if the full-size prepped picture, run it through your regrade process, would come out looking more (or exactly) like your reference picture of choice?
Can these settings be applied to the entire movie before working in a program such as Adobe Premiere?
@ dlvh
Sure!
Avisynth handles lots of such functions. (I don’t know what the paint program’s JPEG Artifact Removal uses for it’s Digital Noise Reduction. g-force mentioned it had the “look” of a spatial median filter, of which there are such Avisynth plug-in filters.) A few lines of Avisynth script, tunneled into your editor (I think Premiere takes .AVI/.AVS scripts), and you can try looking at the entire movie at that one setting in choppy realtime. I’m sure Lucas Mess™ was messing it up scene-by-scene, if not shot-by-shot. If so, you would script different settings for various ranges of frames – easy enough, but not as interactive as a paint program (which still could be used as a prototyper to make that part easier).
If you must work up things to get Avisynth files into Premiere, you can always, in the meantime, run the script in a video player (most seem to support this) and quickly preview it that way.
It’s an interesting procedure. I think there’s some smoothing of detail, but I guess it’s either that or unwanted artifacts…
Here’s the other Tarkin frame with the updated color grading.
Bluray:
Bluray regraded:
DrDre said:
… there’s some smoothing of detail, but I guess it’s either that or unwanted artifacts…
With this being only a proof-of-concept, I tend to push things a little further for the effect to be obvious. You can dial it back to your liking. Or use something different. For example, as these artifacts are actually enhanced noise, they would be different frame to frame. That might suggest using stabilized temporal averaging including one frame (or more?) on either side (image-block tracking handles in-frame area-movement). (Avisynth has such filters.) Then apply a milder application of JPEG Artifact Removal's Avisynth equivalent to keep more detail, perceived or real, while still reducing the remaining “out-of-place pixels” noise.
(All this is would be so you’d have the source in the best condition for your regrade to work it’s magic without it being wrongly influenced by things such as color-noise or crushed/blown areas.)
Here’s the other Tarkin frame with the updated color grading.
Bluray:
Bluray regraded:
I think it looks great and that you should move on to other scenes because there’s a good chance I won’t like the next several updates to this one as much as I like this version. 😄 😛
I’m happy with the latest grading, so I won’t be changing it…much 😉.
Not the best reference, but the latest color grading is pretty close to the digital broadcast of the 1997 SE:
Not the best reference, but the latest color grading is pretty close to the digital broadcast of the 1997 SE:
Um… no… it’s not even CLOSE, LOL… but that’s OK because yours is 100 times better. 😉
I’ve made a CC of the Death Star scene from the Silver Screen Edition 35mm scan, based on DrDre’s edits,
I’ve posted the Vimeo link below
Samples:
Vimeo link to the Death Star Council Scene CC |-> https://vimeo.com/159645887
Password: OT
This was a slightly older CC, the colours now have better saturation and a reduction of pink in faces
Updated Silver Screen 35mm CC based on DrDre’s new grab:
Updated Silver Screen 35mm CC based on DrDre’s new grab:
OMG! I was just telling my wife I was wishing it was possible to apply Dr Dre’s work to the silver screen edition! Keep going man this thread is turning into something really special!
Updated Silver Screen 35mm CC based on DrDre’s new grab:
OMG! I was just telling my wife I was wishing it was possible to apply Dr Dre’s work to the silver screen edition! Keep going man this thread is turning into something really special!
I’ll happily 2nd that opinion! I’d personally like to see what the Luke trying out his new light saber shot looks like.
Here’s a screenshot from the SSE:
That looks good! Here’s a small update on the color grading, to fix an issue with the black levels, amongst others:
