I agree that we shouldn’t be reliant on production photos, and by no means should we be correcting to match them, but they’re far from useless.
Average out the colors of three production photos from the same location or set and you get a much better understanding of what the color should be. Two of the production photos have a blueish wall and the other has a grey one? Well then assuming there’s no obvious tint to the photo, the wall should probably lean toward blue. You know? Don’t match the photos, but use them to better understand the color of sets and objects. We aren’t all Mike Verta with the luxury of physically looking at these props. Production photos are the next best thing.
I agree I don’t really understand the line of thinking that automatically throws away the only sources that haven’t faded. If we had really started this from scratch I’d even not be afraid to use stills from the original toyline 21 backs. Really though between Dr. Dre, Poita’s, Willrob, and Nevergreat’s work I feel like the “colors” is just about in the bag finally.
Some people fantasize about buying huge houses if they were rich… if I were rich I’d get all those guys together in the same room so everything would get knocked out in a day. 😃