Estimating the original colors of the original Star Wars trilogy — Page 2

Dr. Dre your color correction algorithms are as sweet as your beats!

This is absolutely amazing and makes the shots look like I remember them. They totally have that “feel” that I grew up with. Agreed with g-force, and just thinking it would be cool to be able to give it a series of frames, scene by scene, have it calculate the correct color for all of the frames, then figure out the best average or most used settings, then apply that consistently to all of the frames in the scene and then save the new frames in an output folder. There are other clips I would love to apply this to beside Star Wars, so I hope you will eventually release this tool to the public. 😃 Great job!

This program is amazing and can be a real game-changer in restoring 35mm prints.

Thanks to all of you! I use MATLAB. I’m planning to make the algorithm part of a future release of the ColorCorrect tool.

(posted in wrong thread – moved to Star Wars Trilogy SE bluray color regrade - page 20)

Here’s an example of what Team Negative1’s Silver Screen Edition would look like using the automated film color retrieval algorithm (top raw LPP, bottom color correction). The sequence was corrected as a whole, so not each frame individually.

O yes, it’seems a matter of seconds…

Very nice Dre. Looks really good.

The colors look amazing, but the image is too dark overall.

Yes, the algorithm increases the range of the colors to span the maximum range from 0-255, but it doesn’t adjust the contrast or perform a gamma correction. That would be a post-processing step.

Sure, you could assume some optimal gamma curve. However, in practise it would probably be a matter of taste, and depend on the type of scene you’re color correcting.

The predicted colors are actually pretty close to the colors of a Technicolor print, which is also pretty dark for this scene.

Bluray matched to Tech IB print:

Automatic color retrieval for -1 LPP:

I’m in the process of preparing a video sample of an automated global correction of the majority of the first reel of the Silver Screen Edition, using one of the early raw samples Team Negative1 posted a while ago. Here are a couple of sample frames, that imo reveals an authentic seventies look, that is consistent with the colors of Technicolor print scans we’ve seen, without the color biases that the Technicolor print scans generally have (top raw, bottom correction):

Note that the rebel soldiers have bright blue shirts, and gray pants…

Looking very nice Dre. The Blue and Grey gives a good appearance.

Wonderful work.

It’s interesting to note that it appears this shot originally had a green bias, as it does on the Technicolor prints. So, it’s not an anomaly of the Technicolor print. The greenish color does not appear on any of the home video releases.

Yup, you can correct most of the reel in one go, provided the color shifts are consistent. This is what I’ve done with the above examples. I did notice that the early Tantive IV shots of reel one have slightly different shifts, so they require separate correcting. The procedure is as follows:

1. Calibrate the color correction model on a set of frames, preferably with neutral colors, so not too many delibirate color biases. I wouldn’t calibrate the model on the Tatooine frames, as these had filters applied to them. In this case I calibrated the model on 1 out of 24 frames of almost the entire Tantive IV sequence.

2. This model is then used to correct almost the entire first reel.

It’s as simple as that. The second reel I think is more challenging, because it mostly features Tatooine footage, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there 😉.

What I love about this method, is that it’s completely unbiased. There’s no preconceptions of “what anyone believes it should look like”. Take for example these frames:

Although the print has a blue shift, the latter frame should actually be blue, as is confirmed by the shot also being blue on the Technicolor prints. The home video releases all have R2-D2 in neutral colors, though…

Here are a set of other corrected frames from reel 1. Aside from a few tweaks I believe the automated correction comes pretty close to the original theatrical color timing, especially considering the quality of the source, and the fact that it is a blind color correction:

Out of all the Original Trilogy the film I have most looked at is Empire Strikes Back.

There are definitely some shots that I think have plain wrong Color in the Original. Now you may just want to match the colors to the theatrical prints which is fine if that is what you want to do.

But in the case of an error which I think there are a few in Empire that just don’t look right what then?

The shots that don’t look correct I think are the Asteroid Canyon Explosion element. (needs separate correction)

And I also think the Planet Bespin might not also be right. Are there any images of that planet not used in the film as a raw image or production still of the planet. I think it was meant to be Brown and white can anyone confirm this?

found this ^

Also much of the Blue is gone from Cloud City Skies. In fact the film is a nightmare to do with Blue / cyan spectrum in some bits. But it sometimes tips the other direction to Red / Yellow. And also sometimes the magenta too.

What you have to remember is when anything is combined (i.e. Bluescreen the individual elements often need separate correction not lumped together as one image because they are not one whole image they are two combined) It needs different handling especially with Empire, all the skies and so on. This is the main weirdness on the Bluescreen shots not the actual footage when there is no Bluescreen present.

I’d be interested what you get from the asteroid canyon explosion anyway without color correcting the Falcon with it.