I’ve been wondering why the Technicolor print scans we’ve been using and still are using as a color reference, aside from the obvious green shift, also seems to have a slight pink shift, when the common belief is, that they’re not supposed to fade. The sky on Tatooine is more often than not a shade of purple rather than blue.

Today I came across this quote:

“If you took a Technicolor dye imbibition print and you projected it many times at a drive-in theater and put a lot of light through it, the dyes do fade a little bit — particularly the cyan — although not that badly. But if you are careful with Technicolor imbibition prints, and keep them in the dark and don’t show them a lot, they don’t seem to fade at all. I’ve never seen one that has faded if properly cared for. It is a remarkably good process. Technicolor imbibition on triacetate base is very, very good.”

So, although Technicolor prints are extremely stable, they are not entirely fade proof, and the pink shift in the Star Wars print scans could have been caused by a very slight fading of the cyan layer.