DrDre

I’ve been toying with this idea for a while now. While waiting for a good reference for my theatrical regrade of Raiders of the Lost Ark, I’ve upgraded the ColorCorrect tool I’ve developed, and ran some tests on the Star Wars bluray. I was pleased with the results, so I’m going to go ahead with regrading the entire Star Wars Trilogy shot by shot. My main inspiration was this shot posted by Mike Verta:

When I saw that image, I thought, that’s what I want this trilogy to look like.

I will be using print scans, mostly a color corrected LPP, also used as a basis for the Silver Screen Edition, and to a lesser degree Technicolor print scans for Star Wars, Mike Verta’s samples, production photos, and the Japanese Special Collection laserdiscs as color references. I will use NeverarGreat’s technicolor recreation as the main source of this project, since he’s vastly improved the quality of many shots, and fixed a host of issues with the official bluray release.
 

Update:

It’s been a little quiet on this front. Having to divide my time between being a parent to a wonderful young boy, and these projects is challenging, but I found a way to go forward. I will be attempting to create the best shot possible given my own capabilities, and the references available. I will try to get at least one shot finished each day. As I will be using NeverarGreat’s great work as the source, I hope to get a V1 out there relatively soon, that takes advantage of the good consistency in NeverarGreat’s work. Anyway, I’m focussing on getting the most of of the bluray, and so quality to me matters more than speed.

Here’s a set of 30 regraded frames:

Here’s another Tantive IV regrade:

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

Great comparison!

The colors look really good. There’s a lot of noise in the sky, though. Is that in the source? If not, I would suggest increasing the stabilization parameter, which should reduce the noise substantially. You might need a few more color spaces to converge to the reference colors, but with the increased speed of v2.1 it should not be a problem.

Here’s the ColorCorrect tool v2.1:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8_LYKyZDiajcnJncUlnR0Z5SVU/view?usp=sharing

This new version includes a fast processing mode, that allows for significantly faster model building. Creating a color correction model at the default settings (using 10 color spaces) now only takes up to 2 minutes, independent of the frame resolution, while creating a single space model only takes up to 10 seconds. The single color space model is now available by setting the number of color spaces to 1.

Damn Piota, sorry to hear about the crash. That sucks!

Excellent! Thanks Harmy! Yesterday I got your ROTJ DS 2.5, and today this one. It will make an great evening of movie enjoyment…

Excellent work towne32! Certainly worthy of it’s own thread… 😃

Here’s frame on the Tantive IV matched to Mike Verta’s preliminary color grading for Star Wars Legacy Edition.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

Here’s a regraded frame from the Tantive IV sequence.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

This is one awesome shot with the corrected Techicolor IB print colors.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

I upgraded my regrade of the stormtrooper shot. I used a slightly different frame as a reference before, and it didn’t come out right. This is what I believe it should look like.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

Here’s the LUT for this regrade:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8_LYKyZDiajVGNtaV93TjM5Nm8/view?usp=sharing

Using one of the frames Mike Verta posted on his site, I was inspired by Darth Lucas to attempt another regrade of a Star Wars bluray frame. I’m pretty pleased with the results.

Here’s the Mike Verta preliminary color grading for one of the Mos Eisley shots:

Here’s what I end up with after I corrected the Technicolor IB print scans using this reference.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

I think they look really good!

Here’s the the bluray matched to the GOUT, using the color correction tool.

GOUT:

Bluray:

Bluray matched to GOUT:

Here’s the LUT for matching this shot to the GOUT:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8_LYKyZDiajU0YtcmNmSndMSG8/view?usp=sharing

towne32 said:

Not bad, Dre.

One tricky part about this shot, if coloring Harmy’s version, the source (and to some degree the color) switches halfway through the shot. I imagine this will complicate the use of your tool?

Then you have no other choice then to use multiple frames for reference in a shot.

NeverarGreat said:

I spent probably a full day trying to correct this shot for my project, but the blu-ray’s gradients are too degraded for anything more than an approximation regarding color. In particular, the yellow droid’s gradients are crushed in the source to those of C-3PO and the surrounding buildings.

Here’s the above grading (with a slight adjustment) applied to the bluray, using the color correction tool.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

Here is the screenshot comparison:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/161572

Here’s an improved attempt at regrading the frame, based on the Mike Verta reference:

Darth Lucas said:

That looks awesome DrDre! The only issue I see is the black levels are a little off and have gone into a slightly too bright blue. That’s not according to any reference though, just my own eyes. The landspeeder in particular looks fantastic though. Your tool continues to amaze me.

Thanks! It is based on this frame, posted by Mike Verta:

Here’s a quick little experiment, based on a frame Mike Verta posted on his site.

Harmy:

Darth Lucas:

DrDre:

Darth Lucas said:

The only weird thing I can see in that SOTS example is for some reason it has made poor Mr. Bluebird an odd shade of teal/green, while he is still a nice shade of sky-blue in the original 35mm frame.

I applied a bit too much stabilization, but the corrected frame has been updated, so the bird is blue again.

Here’s another example of the improved capabilities of the ColorCorrect tool v2.0 using one of the most difficult frames posted in this thread from the Song of the South. The artifacts are much reduced, while the color match is much closer.

35 mm reference:

16 mm source:

16 mm source matched to 35 mm with ColorCorrect v1.4:

16 mm source matched to 35 mm with ColorCorrect v2.0:

TV’s Frink said:

That’s so last week.

I live in a different time zone…

I watched the workprint of ROTJ Despecialized 2.0, and it’s a massive improvement over 1.0. Great work, once again!

Here’s the ColorCorrect tool v2.0:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8_LYKyZDiajcG42Rnk2YlVIdGs/view?usp=sharing

Updates include:

1. A new color matching algorithm, with improved stabilization.
2. An option to increase the number of color spaces, that the algorithm uses to match the source and reference (max 100). Increasing the number of color spaces leads to more accurate results, but is also slower.
3. A new stabilization parameter that has a range of 0 to 25. Use this option, if the source is noisy, or if the reference colors are inconsistent. Increasing this value improves the quality of the output image. Usually a value of 0 to 5, will lead to a much improved result, without seriously affecting the quality of the color match. Higher values may result in a slower convergence to the desired color palette, thus requiring a larger number of color spaces.