kk650's Star Wars Saga: Regraded and Semi-Specialized (Released) — Page 31

Your algorithm won’t work on scenes that are intentionally filtered a certain color, right? Just wondering for the debate of how blue Hoth night shots should be.

towne32 said:

Your algorithm won’t work on scenes that are intentionally filtered a certain color, right? Just wondering for the debate of how blue Hoth night shots should be.

The idea is that you calibrate the algorithm on shots that were filmed during the day, and then correct the night shots with this correction model, which should give you the correct colors for those shots.

I’m gonna come across as a bit of a dick here so I apologize in advance.

I see very little difference between the TFA shots. Actually at first glance, I thought you had accidentally posted the same pictures twice. Wasn’t until I looked really closely that I could see the very slight change in the skintones. I guess if that minuscule difference is something that really bothers you then more power to you, I just don’t see how it’s a difference anyone could notice or care about on casual viewing.

Wow… well why I’m not necessarily sold that the TFA changes are “better” they are definitely very visible to me, even though they are much more subtle than say his Jedi regrade, he’s shifted all the reds in the skin tones towards orange/peach hues and it creates a very gentle orange push in the other shots as well.

To know whether or not Harrison’s face was really that red, we need to ask the most important question…

“What was his blood pressure during shooting?”

Because high blood pressure can give bright red hues to real people in real life. 😃

Darth Lucas said:

I’m gonna come across as a bit of a dick here so I apologize in advance.

I see very little difference between the TFA shots. Actually at first glance, I thought you had accidentally posted the same pictures twice. Wasn’t until I looked really closely that I could see the very slight change in the skintones. I guess if that minuscule difference is something that really bothers you then more power to you, I just don’t see how it’s a difference anyone could notice or care about on casual viewing.

No worries, you don’t last long as a regrader without developing thick skin haha. I don’t see anything dickish about what you wrote there though to be honest, until a couple of years ago I was exactly like you, I didn’t really notice or care whether fleshtones looked too red/green/blue, all I cared about was removing blanket tints, it was creating the V2 Star Wars Semi-Specialised Editions that really opened my eyes in that regard and made me a lot more sensitive to fleshtones. Now its the first thing I look at when regrading because fleshtones are actually really important. When a viewer is watching a film he/she actually spends the majority of the film focused on the faces of the characters which is completely normal, like our eyes gravitate towards a person’s face in a photograph, our brains are hardwired to lock onto faces. I completely understand where you’re coming from because I used to be exactly the same, that’s why i’ve been so surprised that the regrade for The Force Awakens has been as popular as it has been.

kk650 said:

Darth Lucas said:

I’m gonna come across as a bit of a dick here so I apologize in advance.

I see very little difference between the TFA shots. Actually at first glance, I thought you had accidentally posted the same pictures twice. Wasn’t until I looked really closely that I could see the very slight change in the skintones. I guess if that minuscule difference is something that really bothers you then more power to you, I just don’t see how it’s a difference anyone could notice or care about on casual viewing.

No worries, you don’t last long as a regrader without developing thick skin haha. I don’t see anything dickish about what you wrote there though to be honest, until a couple of years ago I was exactly like you, I didn’t really notice or care whether fleshtones looked too red/green/blue, all I cared about was removing blanket tints, it was creating the V2 Star Wars Semi-Specialised Editions that really opened my eyes in that regard and made me a lot more sensitive to fleshtones. Now its the first thing I look at when regrading because fleshtones are actually really important. When a viewer is watching a film he/she actually spends the majority of the film focused on the faces of the characters which is completely normal, like our eyes gravitate towards a person’s face in a photograph, our brains are hardwired to lock onto faces. I completely understand where you’re coming from because I used to be exactly the same, that’s why i’ve been so surprised that the regrade for The Force Awakens has been as popular as it has been.

Oh I get it. I notice flesh tones too, I was just saying I don’t really have a problem with the flesh tones in TFA. They don’t seem “too red” to me. They look pretty natural. I’m used to your corrections being more dramatic, so the fact that it’s so subtle made me not notice right away. And given that the flesh tones don’t really bother me, I was just saying I don’t see how it would really make a difference on casual viewing.

clutchins said:

I hold the same opinion, DL. And I don’t mean to sound rude either. It’s really a matter of opinion and you can grade your works however you like, but I see no practical differences besides the skin tones. That said, I enjoy your other works like Blade Runner and LOTR and Mad Max.

Like I said to DL, I perfectly understand where you’re coming from because I used to feel the same way. I’m very glad to hear that you like Blade Runner, LOTR and Mad Max, the first two are actually two of the three main reasons I started creating regrades three years ago, the last of course being fixing the colours of the Star Wars Original Trilogy and editing out the bad Special Edition changes. The plan was actually to stop after those three but I got kinda sidetracked and here I am three years later haha

I mean, what I’ve noticed about real life is that (with Caucasians at least) skintone can really vary. Sometimes it’s a little more peachy/orange like your corrections, and other times it’s slightly more pink/red like the original. Neither look unnatural to me, which is why I say it doesn’t seem like it makes much difference. But hey if it makes that difference to you, that’s all that matters.

Dreamaster said:

Wow… well why I’m not necessarily sold that the TFA changes are “better” they are definitely very visible to me, even though they are much more subtle than say his Jedi regrade, he’s shifted all the reds in the skin tones towards orange/peach hues and it creates a very gentle orange push in the other shots as well.

To know whether or not Harrison’s face was really that red, we need to ask the most important question…

“What was his blood pressure during shooting?”

Because high blood pressure can give bright red hues to real people in real life. 😃

I find the fleshtones of the TFA regrade more pleasing to my eyes but I wouldn’t say they are ‘better’ because of course colour grading is completely subjective, everybody will have a different opinion on what looks ‘better’. I’ve had look at production stills of The Force Awakens and Harrison Ford’s face doesn’t look anywhere near as red as the blu-ray so I do personally believe that the filmmakers made a conscious decision to make the fleshtones on the TFA blu-ray more red to more closely match the IMHO reddish/sunburnt fleshtones of the other six Star Wars films on blu-ray.

With that in mind, the main aim of the TFA regrade really was to create a version of TFA that maintains fleshtone continuety with my other Star Wars regrades that corrected the overly reddish/sunburnt fleshtones on their respective blu-rays.

Darth Lucas said:

I mean, what I’ve noticed about real life is that (with Caucasians at least) skintone can really vary. Sometimes it’s a little more peachy/orange like your corrections, and other times it’s slightly more pink/red like the original. Neither look unnatural to me, which is why I say it doesn’t seem like it makes much difference. But hey if it makes that difference to you, that’s all that matters.

Yes I know, sometimes you come across young people with very reddish faces, almost looking sunburnt but its just their natural complection, nothing to do with staying in the sun too long. Where I live it’s common to see older people with more reddish complections. With the TFA regrade the main aim was just to maintain fleshtone continuety with the other Star Wars regrades i’ve done, not make any commentary on what is natural looking fleshtones.

Here are some shots of Harrison Ford though on set that suggest his face wasn’t as red as suggested on the blu-ray (the first shot can be directly compared to some of the TFA screencaps i’ve put up, its taken from the same scene):

http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/star-wars-the-force-awakens-i2488496/hNFJyY

http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/star-wars-the-force-awakens-i2488496/ZJLkOS

http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/star-wars-the-force-awakens-i2488496/IrHUpo

http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/star-wars-the-force-awakens-i2488496/BbZVoG

http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/star-wars-the-force-awakens-i2488496/fp56G0

http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/star-wars-the-force-awakens-i2488496/v25Mgq

http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/star-wars-the-force-awakens-i2488496/2HBBl1

http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/star-wars-the-force-awakens-i2488496/hltf0u

http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/star-wars-the-force-awakens-i2488496/q2qmc4

kk650 said:

Darth Lucas said:

I’m gonna come across as a bit of a dick here so I apologize in advance.

I see very little difference between the TFA shots. Actually at first glance, I thought you had accidentally posted the same pictures twice. Wasn’t until I looked really closely that I could see the very slight change in the skintones. I guess if that minuscule difference is something that really bothers you then more power to you, I just don’t see how it’s a difference anyone could notice or care about on casual viewing.

No worries, you don’t last long as a regrader without developing thick skin haha. I don’t see anything dickish about what you wrote there though to be honest, until a couple of years ago I was exactly like you, I didn’t really notice or care whether fleshtones looked too red/green/blue, all I cared about was removing blanket tints, it was creating the V2 Star Wars Semi-Specialised Editions that really opened my eyes in that regard and made me a lot more sensitive to fleshtones. Now its the first thing I look at when regrading because fleshtones are actually really important. When a viewer is watching a film he/she actually spends the majority of the film focused on the faces of the characters which is completely normal, like our eyes gravitate towards a person’s face in a photograph, our brains are hardwired to lock onto faces. I completely understand where you’re coming from because I used to be exactly the same, that’s why i’ve been so surprised that the regrade for The Force Awakens has been as popular as it has been.

What I have noticed is a tendency to over correct. Yes, some of the skintones in the Star Wars movies are too red in their blu-ray versions, but a great many of the corrections remove virtually all of the red creating a very jaundiced look that is just as unnatural as the original red. TFA is particularly bad, but what I find the biggest issue with that one is that it is over saturated. So I very much think that all of these movies need to be corrected to remove some red, but not to the level that many do it. Leia in ANH should never look yellow. She should have a nice pink to her tone - about halfway between the above blu-ray and the offered correction. She seems to have the same skin tone as one of my coworkers. I still remember noticing several of our staff sitting across the table from me in indirect natural lighting and realizing how pink they were. A definite pink tone to the skin. Since I saw that, I have backed off my original corrections and approached it with a lighter hand and the results have been much more pleasing. I’ve also compared them to other movies and found that a lot of films have similar tones.

Love the work you have done kk650, but I have been searching the spleen for about an hour and have still not found the 8GB version of the regraded prequels and semi-specialized original trilogy. Please help…

@ZaneFlare92: Thanks for the kind words, always nice when your work is appreciated 😃 Agreed that Episode 1 is a big step up from the DNRed blu-ray, adding grain brings back a lot of its filmic qualities. Episode 1 is my favourite prequel so I wanted to do everything possible to improve the waxy look of the blu-ray.

I’ve never put a password on any of my releases so the issue you’re having with ROTJ must be related to a part that has been corrupted during download. Have you tried comparing the size of the different parts? They should all be the same size apart from the last part. If you find one that’s not the same size, thats most likely the part thats giving you the problem. You should try redownloading it with the site you used before, whether uploaded or 1fichier, and if you have the same problem again try downloading that part with the site you haven’t used, that should fix the problem.

@yotsuya: You feel that my Star Wars regrades are just as ‘unnatural’ and therefore just as bad as the colours of the official blu-rays. You are of course free to your opinion, but that comes across to me as total BS, no offense. You might want to consider using IMHO a bit as well so you don’t come across as one of those types constantly declaring their own very subjective opinion as objective fact, which gets kind of tiring to read after a while.

The saturation of the TFA regrade is exactly the same as saturation of the blu-ray, I always maintain the saturation levels of the film i’m regrading to respect the intentions of the filmmakers (unless its clearly undersaturated which is not the case here), only the fleshtones were shifted to remove the overly reddish sunburnt fleshtones of the blu-ray yet it is my TFA regrade that is oversaturated and ‘particularly bad’ according to you, not the blu-ray its matched the saturation of? Are you for real? I don’t know if you’re trolling here or not.

Assuming you’re not trolling, the issue that many here have with the first Leia shot in the comparisons is actually an issue of saturation, not an issue of how much yellow or red there is in the fleshtones. The saturation in the Star Wars official blu-ray is constantly changing from shot to shot, which is why I selectively regraded the vast majority of the Tarkin shots because they were far too saturated and beyond the acceptable saturation variation threshold I was willing to accept. The first Leia shot was not beyond this acceptable saturation variation threshold for me. I can clearly see from the reaction of a few here on this site that it was for you guys. Fair enough but we’ll have to agree to disagree there. If a consensus was required on how every shot of Star Wars was meant to look, I don’t think there would be a single Star Wars release to this day.

Not everybody is going to be happy with the colour choices you make, that is a fact that every regrader has no choice but to accept at some point if they want to be able to actually release something instead of endlessly debating about what Star Wars or indeed any film ‘should’ look like.

Considering the projection bulbs were very warm and yellow in the 70’s, I don’t have any problem accepting that Leia in that shot is a little more yellow than she would have been on set, in fact I would expect it and regraded the Original Trilogy as much as possible to take the warmer projection bulbs of the times into account. I also maintained a higher than strictly necessary saturation level to recreate the punchier colors of the technicolor print frames of Star Wars that i’ve had access to and really like the look of.

@Deloreanhunter12: Appreciate that! I never created 8gb versions of the V2 Star Wars releases, it is something that I have been planning to do for a while and haven’t got round to it yet. If you don’t want to wait though you can always download the larger versions and create 8gb versions from those.

@kk650 - Sorry to hear you took my comments so personally. You are far from the only one to take the skintones too far to the yellow. I’ve noticed it is a common problem. I did the same thing myself on my first few attemps at color correction. Since then I have done a lot of comparison between Star Wars and many other films and done some observations of people and I’ve found that I prefer the mid tone, not too red, not too yellow. That is my preference and I believe that is typical of how most films are color graded. Though I have noticed many films where the skin tones are redder and many where the saturation is upped so the skintones are more orange than peach. Skintones have quite a range and in Star Wars it is particularly noticable between Leia and Tarkin’s more pale skin and Luke, Han, and Ben which are darker. You by no means have to agree with me, but I have yet to add any correction that I find to yellow to my go-to version of the films. I still watch the GOUT or the old LD’s when I want good color.

And as for TFA, I find the original film to be oversaturated and the skin tones too red. It was like he was trying to match that ANH blu-ray skintones. Not good. I think you did an excellent job with the skin tones on TFA, but I think the entire film benefits from lowering the saturation as well as bringing down the red in the skintones. Almost felt like he was going for Fuji color instead of matching the OT’s Kodak color.

@yotsuya: I didn’t take your comments personally but I would suggest in future that you give your opinions in a less direct manner and to show a bit more humility and awareness that your opinion is just that, an opinion. Most important of all, try to remember to show respect for the work that goes into creating these releases, seven releases in this case that took me more than 4 years working on them on and off, even if you don’t particularly like the end result. This is something that I personally learnt helping out as a volunteer on film shoots in my younger years, a crazy amount of work goes into making films regardless of whether you personally consider it good or bad, so show respect for the work that went into making it even if you don’t respect the end result. The same applies for releases.

I think the end result of all seven is great, especially TFA that has been very popular and many agree with me. I have an opinion, the many people that agree with me have an opinion, you of course have your own different opinion. Your opinion has no more greater value than mine or those that agree with me that my Star Wars regrades are a big improvement on the blu-rays. Many would argue that my opinion has a great deal more weight than yours because I have almost 200 regraded releases available online to my name, but I don’t agree with that viewpoint because I believe that regrading, like art, is completely subjective and nobody is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, regardless of the difference in regrading experience.

I don’t know if english is not your native tongue or not, if its not that would give you a bit of an excuse, but you need to try to come across as less patronising. Comments like

‘You are far from the only one to take the skintones too far to the yellow. I’ve noticed it is a common problem. I did the same thing myself on my first few attemps at color correction.’

comes across as very arrogant and superior, like you have the divine right to declare what Star Wars should look like for everybody else because it is ‘your preference’ and you came to a definitive conclusion about how Star Wars should look based on your ‘first few attempts at color correction’. How many attempts do you think i’ve done colour correcting Star Wars over the last four years? Hundreds if not thousands. Do you see me placing my own opinion of what Star Wars should look like over others because of those four years experimenting with the colours of SW, TESB and ROTJ? No.

From where i’m standing, ‘your preference’ would be Star Wars with ugly reddish sunburnt fleshtones if you maintain the same saturation level or a very desaturated Star Wars, to get the reddish sunburnt fleshtones under control, that looks nothing like the Technicolor prints with punchy colours I have access to, both options would look very unappealing to me but I would never say that they looked just as unnatural as the blu-rays because that would be BS. We’re just going to have to agree to disagree about how Star Wars ‘should’ look.

Edit: Retracted.

@darthrush: That’s cool darthrush. I disagree of course, shifting the fleshtones any further towards red while maintaining saturation will leave the fleshtones looking sunburnt IMHO, you would have to desaturate the colours to create space to shift towards red but I like the saturation level where it is with my Star Wars regrades. Of course I respect that you have a different opinion to mine, I imagine there are quite a few people here that would prefer a more desaturated look for Star Wars and the other six films as well. Everybody has an opinion and nobody’s right or wrong but when posters start to declare their opinions as fact, that just leads to problems.

Quick question, and I don’t mean it insultingly, but if you don’t mind Leia being more yellow than she was on set, why do you care if Harrison looks more red than he does on set? I’d say red is a much more natural skin tone than yellow for someone who doesn’t have jaundice.

Just my opinion of course. I still respect the ‘semi-specialization’ you’ve done.

@Possessed: The mispelling of ‘semi-specialization’ instead of the correct spelling that would be ‘semi-specialisation’ in the case of my releases does not suggest much respect on your part. Neither does previous comments of ‘jaundiced fleshtones’ about my semi-specialised releases that i’ve seen from you in other threads.

That said, assuming you’re not trolling, which I think you are, i’ll bite and ask you this: what do you think happens to a Star Wars print with normal looking fleshtones that is projected using a warmer 70’s projection bulb? Do you think the fleshtones on the cinema screen end up looking more red or more yellow than on the print? As far as i’m aware, when you project a film with a warm yellow 70’s projection bulb like i’ve heard Star Wars was shown with in cinemas, that makes the fleshtones more yellow, not more red.

That in a nutshell is why its okay for Leia, Luke, Han etc to look more yellow than normal, because it fits the look of the time the film was released in. The only way to get reddish sunburnt fleshtones you like would have been to shoot Star Wars through a red projection bulb when showing it theatrically. As far as I’m aware that didn’t happen so that’s why sunburnt fleshtones in Star Wars look so wrong for me, there’s no reason for a film from that time projected with a warm yellow 70’s projection bulb to look like that.

What? We all say “despecialized” around here. I think I take back what I said before, you’re being extremely sensitive. I doubt he meant anything by that and you shouldn’t think that someone failing to replicate your exact spelling means disrespect. I’ve watched every one of your semi versions and never noticed the spelling difference.

Edit: WTF. Your thread title uses a “z” and not an “s”. Are you trolling us with that title?

Edit 2: Oh, you didn’t start the thread. Still not a big deal, though.

The way you are responding to people’s honest and respectful feedback/opinions is urging me to lose my respect for you.

I assume he’s just having a bad day, since he’s normally a bit more open minded about the criticism. The critique about the yellow fleshtones is a somewhat common one around here, and he normally deals with it well. Or maybe it was just one too many times.