Ok so these are your screencaps from page 5. I went through the gout dvd just for another reference. I think that yes, they probably look too colorful for how Star Wars would have looked in a theater or even their original positive assembly off the original negative. (whatever the highest generation source that you could project onto a screen) But the color does look mostly accurate.
Here are the frames I did not think looked exactly right. However, keep in mind, I am just viewing them on a laptop that is not professionally calibrated. I have not seen any version of Star Wars in a theater and my only reference is the Gout dvd. Well I do have the 1997 special edition widescreen vhs. But without a digital copy of that, it's harder to look carefully at.
So I may be biased towards how the films looked with the THX mastering in 1993 and 1997, which the more I read here suggests that may not quite have been how they originally looked.
Hope this helps.
tatooine should probably be a little brighter. looks like especially crushed whites kinda flattens the whole look.
I don't know if you can do anything about it but I think the Gout dvd has more different black levels in Vader's cape that were all crushed down in 2004. so while the overall balance seems good, his cape is missing slight different gradations of dark grey, instead it's all black.
when both this and a gout frame are fully desaturated (turned black and white) the gout actually has more contrast and it's easier to make out the different patterns of sand hills. Then again, the frame I screencaped in windows media player wasn't that close to this one so yeah. maybe try taking down the midtones a bit?
Leia's hologram seems too blue tinted, then again maybe it's supposed to be that way? Well, it wasn't in 1993/2006 but I don't know how correct that is.
luke's face looks too bright and doesn't stand out as much from the rest of the sky. This looks like a golden color tint was applied to the entire frame blending all the colors together, kinda like instagram but not nearly as much. In gout, the face and sky are definitely set apart as different colors.
this shot is probably different in more versions than any other. (well except for CGI additions) In gout, it's a more purpleish blue. But if I remember correctly, the Making of Star Wars had it more like this while Star Wars to Jedi looked more like the gout. No idea which is more correct but I've always felt the 97 color onward looked too dark and over saturated. If you have two suns, surely it should at least look like you can still see some color in the sky.
tarkin's face just looks flat here. Like the midtones were boosted but the highlights were not to compensate. His forehead should be a little brighter. Also you can see more shadow detail in Vader's cloak in the Gout again.
again, everything seems to be too golden orange. Namely the landspeeder doesn't look as reddish orange and the smoke doesn't look whitish blue. But maybe the THX color correction in 1993 overdid that and this is actually more correct. I don't know.
more crushed blacks in the panel to Han's left. Not necessarily easy to fix because other areas look ok and you wouldn't want to effect them as well.
walls are blue tinted instead of neutral grey like they are on gout. Yet again, not sure which one is right. but this one seems to have punched up contrast.
Again, walls are greenish blueish instead of neutral grey. While the color of the wall is debatable, Leia and Luke's outfits (plus Han's belt) should be white and here they seem green tinted.
Leia's face looks too flat here. Like the highlights of her face should be taken up slightly. also looks overly smooth and soft, like DVNR but the rest of the frame seems fine.
Luke and Leia's shirt seem to have crushed whites, also they're not very white. In the gout, they are among the brightest points in the frame, except for the lights (of which one is above 3po's head). Here they kinda don't stand out.
Again, this looks too golden tinted for the whole frame, making it lose the color differences between different objects. Crushed whites like in previous frame.
Although you didn't seem to use any shots changed for the special edition, this one had the elements digitally recomposited so there isn't a mismatch in contrast. Looks good as far as I can tell.
too yellow gold tinted, too high contrast, too much crushed blacks. This is probably one where I think the Gout footage looks far more natural, in terms of being less mucked with.
the Gout looks far better for these shots cockpit shots than the official 2004 version, hands down. While your shot undoes a lot of the crushed blacks/whites and lack of natural color spectrum, I still feel it doesn't go far enough with color correction/contrast adjustment on this shot.
This one probably looks the worst of your version. Whites are way too crushed. With the midtones brought up from the official transfer, the highlights also need to be increased to correspond.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I do have screencaps of the gout dvd that are fairly close to most of these frames. Although I don't know if there would be much point in posting them seeing as the dvd was readily available and most other people here could probably get an exact frame to match it.
Oh and when you play the gout dvd in a dvd drive, my disc is officially named- Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope [1977 & 1997 Versions] [P&S]
But the bonus disc is always widescreen, even if you buy the fullscreen 2006 dvd. And I do have the widescreen edition.
