The Dark Knight is probably the ugliest and most poorly transferred film in my collection, which is a shame seeing as it is my all-time favorite movie. With that being said, I was wondering if anyone could help in restoring this film to better reflect the theatrical version. I plan to reduce the EE present on the disk as best I can and then go over and correct the colors of each scene.

So far I have reduced the EE on the Blu-Ray using AE.

Blu-Ray
Blu-Ray
Blu-Ray with EE Reduction

The next step is fixing the colors. For a reference I am using the screener DVD. However, I am not sure what method to use to fix the colors.

Using the luma from the Blu-Ray with the screener colors produces accurate results, but the matte on both is different and cropping would need to be done. Not to mention IMAX scenes and portions that are watermarked can’t be used.

Screener

Blu-Ray Luma with Screener Chroma

A manual grade seems to only fix one area (e.g. skin tones, sky, sidewalk) and leave the rest of the image even more inaccurate.

I have also tried Dr. Dre’s color correction tool. It seems to produce overly magenta skin tones and produce some ugly artifacts in the shadows and highlights.

Lastly, I am an infant in knowledge when it comes to this sort of technical work. I have never embarked on something like this before. Batman has always been an inspiration to me and the Dark Knight quickly became my favorite film of all time. I’m running on passion more than technical-know-how. That being said, any wisdom and guidance from those more experienced in this sort of thing is greatly appreciated. If you can help, wonderful, if not, thank you for simply taking the time to read this.