DrDre

I love that look. I think I will prepare a short video sample of this sequence, to see how it looks in motion.

Having looked at the photos of the Senator screening, I came to the conclusion that the panels in the back, should not be gray, but more beige. I now think this would be my final color grading for frame 8228:

Senator print:

Bluray:

Harmy's Despecialized Edition 2.5:

DrDre color grading:

I think you're right. Back to the drawing board...

I've been working on an automated correction for color shifted sources. Here are some preliminary results:

Edit: accidentally deleted picture. 

A video sample of the opening scene should be done by tomorrow...

yotsuya said:

In checking my media, I've found that the subject is more complicated. We all know the condition of the DVD's and Blu-rays, but they are not the only sources (though they are the best sources for ATOC and ROTS). Then there is the GOUT, full of artifacts that blur the image. Then the LD sets with the definitive edition and the Japanese special collection being the best editions in separate ways. Then there is a source I was overlooking. TPM, ANH, TESB, and ROTJ all aired on HD channels in Europe before the Lowry transfers. Some copies of these broadcasts are better than others. One of them just proved to me just how unrecoverably messed up the Lowry transfers are. (note, I am not including the several film scanning projects currently underway)

This leads me to alter my goal of just a pure color correction of the Blu-ray to fixing that problems that have resulted form the scan. Among them are all the rebel ship explosions at the Death Star, the map of the approaching Death Star in the rebel briefing room, the screen on the Death Star showing the approach to Yavin, and a anything else I find. I'll also be looking at light sabers for color, but I have come to the conclusion that Luke's lightsaber was not properly colored to begin with in some shots. But my first step is going to be to color correct all these sources to match, at least in general. I really should post some screen caps of what I have done so far, but it was the first draft and I didn't correct the brightness of the image, just the colors. I have some work to do for my second draft and I'll post some images then. Right now most of what I'm doing is watching the different versions to pinpoint the differences.

 The goal of the project is still a bit ambiguous in my opinion. The main goal seems to be to make the colors consistent between films, but on the other hand, when you're discussing correcting for bad scans, this implies trying to retrieve the original color timing, which is not the same thing. 

Here's another frame corrected in a similar way, by first matching to a print, and then further correcting color shifts, etc.

Bluray:

Match to print:

Correction:

g-force said:

DrDre said:

g-force said:

I think the new "Corrected" one is a little too purple, like you went too far correcting the green.

-G

 Yeah, I think you're right. This looks a lot better:

that looks perfect to me! How different is this correction from when you were using Verta's Leia pic?

-G

 This one is based on on a 35 mm frame that can be found on thestarwarstrilogy.com:

I matched the bluray to this reference:

I then first manually adjusted the curves to reduce the green shift, and after overdoing it, I used a white balancing script in MATLAB to get to the final result:

TServo2049 said:

I think a lot of Tech prints of the time had a green shift? Or at least a lot of the Star Wars IB prints?

Though to be fair, there is similar "green shift" in AntcuFaalb's VHS bootleg (not taken from a British IB Tech, but from a regular USA Eastman Kodak print), and on the official 70mm collectible film cells (which were from a new 70mm positive - 1995 LPP stock, according to the edge codes - and came from an "original internegative", which apparently had near-fully intact color as recently as 20 years ago!)

Also, back in 2012 someone posted this in the DeEd thread:

"I have owned and/or had access to multiple Star Wars (the original) 35mm prints and screened numerous others as well (been in the theater exhibition biz for a long time). I remember seeing SW in the theater probably a dozen times during its 77-82 runs. The one fairly unifying factor in all of those prints (including mine) was the muted colors and almost greenish hue. There were a much smaller percentage that had excellent color that was more robust (but never popping mind you).  But by and large, especially at the smaller theaters, the prints always looked more muted."

So maybe the green "shift" was on most/all of the original theatrical print run? (Verta? Can you weigh in on this?)

 The photos from the Senator screening seem to suggest that print did not have a green shift, like many of the others:

g-force said:

I think the new "Corrected" one is a little too purple, like you went too far correcting the green.

-G

 Yeah, I think you're right. This looks a lot better:

I have corrected frame 8228. I think this is what it's supposed to look like without a green shift:

Bluray:

Corrected:

These two screenshots remain my favourite examples of how dull the bluray and WOWOW are compared to the regrade (top bluray, middle WOWOW, bottom regrade):

Here's a screenshot of the bluray matched to another scan of a 35 mm print of the same frame:

Kingherb said:

I really like these shots, the other releases look dull in comparison. Looking forward to the release of this regrade, what format do you plan to release this in?

 I plan to release it as an mkv, as that is the most vertasile.

This is what I get if I use one of your adjusted frames as a reference (with a few tiny adjustments):

Moved from the SR thread:

To give you an idea here's a comparison for frame 8228 between the bluray, Harmy's Despecialized Edition 2.5, and the bluray matched to the Technicolor IB print scans I have.

Bluray:

Harmy:

Tech IB:

and let's throw in the bluray matched to the GOUT for good measure. Note the reduced contrast, leading to some artifacts on Vaders's cape, caused by the crushed blacks in the bluray:

You're right.

To give you an idea here's a comparison for frame 8228 between the bluray, Harmy's Despecialized Edition 2.5, and the bluray matched to the Technicolor IB print scans I have.

Moved to the color matching thread...

NeverarGreat said:

These are great settings! Very filmic. The first comparison made me notice a potential issue with your settings that I have had to deal with when making a custom LUT for the Star Wars blu-ray.

In this shot you can see the that the darker areas of the (supposedly neutral) blackboard are indeed neutral, yet the areas where the light is striking it appear yellowish green. The 35mm frame perhaps goes too far, making the entire board blue, but in my opinion the regrade goes too far in the green direction. This was a big problem with Star Wars, and made things which were supposed to be white look green. A good way that I found of making things look filmic was to boost the blues in the highlights while reducing the blues in the shadows, though usually you will want to just aim for neutral highlights.

 I was still fiddling with the settings a bit. I've updated the above screenshots, so I guess the old ones were v1.4 beta. ;-)

I think this looks much better (as do the others):

35 mm:

Bluray:

WOWOW:

Regrade:

35 mm:

Bluray:

WOWOW:

Regrade:

35 mm:

Bluray:

WOWOW:

Regrade:

I think most of the green/pink problems were introduced with the last update, so here's another update, that I think fixes most of these issues (top bluray, middle WOWOW, bottom regrade). The problem with this frame is, that the green shift/artifacts are probably in the negative, or the original scan of the negative because even the WOWOW, which is slightly red shifted, has patches of green on Belloq's jacket (most noticeable below his right arm). There's even a pink blob on his right arm.

Well, if we're lucky we'll get two restorations, that we can then start comparing for all eternity. ;-)

zee944 said:

That why I wrote 'personally'.

 Maybe I was a little naive in thinking I could convince anyone with that picture. 

zee944 said:

So you did mean it, no irony anywhere?

A video of a video as a proof of the right colors? Come on, that is absurd.

By the way, I personally didn't criticize the color balance, in fact, I said the TechniColor IB's colors could be used, BUT with reduced contrast, else it wouldn't look good on TV screen.

 I wasn't referring to you ;-). 

Seems to be a problem in all of the releases. Belloq's shirt is pink in this shot of the WOWOW:

Considering that both the jacket, and the shirt are very light colored, it seems likely that Belloq beige  jacket was more green tinted than red, since his shirt should be white. Unless he was wearing a pink shirt.