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Star Wars Trilogy SE bluray color regrade (a WIP) — Page 3

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The problem is that none of the production photos I’ve seen seem to reflect a pronounced green shift. The JSC is pretty inconsistent in this respect, and so are the print scans. So, although it certainly off-white, if there is a green color, it’s a creme color with the slightest hint of mint.

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DrDre said:

The problem is that none of the production photos I’ve seen seem to reflect a pronounced green shift. The JSC is pretty inconsistent in this respect, and so are the print scans. So, although it certainly off-white, if there is a green color, it’s a creme color with the slightest hint of mint.

THAT’S THE COLORS… match to that please! PEACH… look at the PEACH in the faces!

(By the way, I think you ARE matching really close to that looking over your regraded shots. In GIMP I took one of them and by eye moved the middle level of the red channel from 1.00 to 1.07 and that to me was perfect… was a very subtle shift away from the mildly green hue in the background and added a touch of warmth to the face)

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There’s still some fine tuning, but I believe I’m getting there… 😉

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I’m happy to report I’ve come up with a filter that is very effective at getting rid of that pesky color noise. I really like this regrade, especially considering how awful the bluray looks for this shot (any shot really). The sand looks like sand, and R2-D2 and C-3PO are the way I remember them. 😃

Ps. Note how in the bluray C-3PO is almost the same color as the sand.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

Bluray regraded with color noise filter:

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This still will serve as the inspiration for my regrade of The Empire Strikes Back, when the time comes:

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Man, the filter really seems to eliminate that inexplicable Magenta. Bravo!

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DrDre said:

The problem is that none of the production photos I’ve seen seem to reflect a pronounced green shift. The JSC is pretty inconsistent in this respect, and so are the print scans. So, although it certainly off-white, if there is a green color, it’s a creme color with the slightest hint of mint.

That’s it exactly. By subtly green, I simply meant that the pixels have a few points more green than anything else, which is what this photo shows. 😃

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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DrDre said:

I’m happy to report I’ve come up with a filter that is very effective at getting rid of that pesky color noise. I really like this regrade, especially considering how awful the bluray looks for this shot (any shot really). The sand looks like sand, and R2-D2 and C-3PO are the way I remember them. 😃

Ps. Note how in the bluray C-3PO is almost the same color as the sand.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

Bluray regraded with color noise filter:

Here’s a screenshot comparison between filtered and unfiltered:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/163035

and the bluray versus the bluray regraded (with filter):

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/163041

Not sure what you’re doing there Doc, but I like it!

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Here’s another Tatooine shot, that will look dramatically different for the regrade.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

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This is incredible. Fantastic work! These will easily be my definitive versions of the “final” George Lucas edits. Can’t wait. 😃

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Thanks! Here’s another shot from the Tantive IV sequence:

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

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Another difficult one to pull off, but I think it worked out nicely. Here’s the first Obi-Wan shot.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

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Yeah, that one’s tricky. I really don’t like it when it gets too monochromatic or bleached out, but the BD is dark and weird.

If I recall, the SSE showed that the Eastman print probably looked pretty reasonable.

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towne32 said:

Yeah, that one’s tricky. I really don’t like it when it gets too monochromatic or bleached out, but the BD is dark and weird.

If I recall, the SSE showed that the Eastman print probably looked pretty reasonable.

That shot is also pretty bright and washed out on the Technicolor print references, but I tried to restore some dynamic, which is a challenge, because the bluray doesn’t give you much latitude.

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To add to the confusion, here’s what it looks like on the JSC laserdisc:

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DrDre said:

Another difficult one to pull off, but I think it worked out nicely. Here’s the first Obi-Wan shot.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

My money says THAT shot is the entire reason the blu ray went “blue”. That sky doesn’t seem to match the other sky shots because it’s so white… “Well make it blue for the new master!”, George said. “OK”… but the technician didn’t realize he was applying the hue shift to the entire film instead of the one scene! 😃

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Clearly this particular Technicolor reference is wrong for that shot. In the pictures from the Senator screening, which used a different Tech print, it had a pale blue sky and was not overly bright.

(insert standard disclaimer about photographs of a projection screen not being completely reliable)

Editing to add: remember how Harmy’s 2.0 was very bright and washed out in this scene? That print definitely has some errors on it, which also included two shots of the lightsaber duel being ridiculously blue.

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Yes, it appears you are more or less correct about the blue, or actually pink/purple sky. The Technicolor references we’ve been using has some issues. It has both green and pink shifts.

Here’s the Senator print photo, which is very bright though:

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DrDre said:

To add to the confusion, here’s what it looks like on the JSC laserdisc:

That one has the most color difference between his face, his robe, and the mountains, in addition to having a really pleasant sky. I compared these to the SSE and this shot is better than it too. Can you ask your algorithm to try and grade it to that?

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The problem matching directly to the JSC is, that like all of the early video releases it is low contrast. This basically means it won’t look good if you don’t do a gamma correction, after which it will look very different.

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It is possible to closely match the Senator photo:

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DrDre said:

It is possible to closely match the Senator photo:

can we see a side by side with your previous attempt?