DrDre

act on instinct said:

Yes that sort of mint green was what I was looking for! Also their sleeves seemed like they should be a bit more yellow/green than such a rich blue, extremely tricky to drag out that beige mixed with the more blue/green walls, especially the way I did using the compressed pre-graded frame as base. Those saturated examples really show off the subtleties in tone! Maybe part of what I’m looking for is higher saturation and color separation?

The rebel shirts are definitely blue. The somewhat greenish look on the technicolor prints are due to the slight green cast, that the techs are known for. I’m using multiple print sources as a reference for this color grading: tech, 1997 SE, and Derann. While it is not color accurate, this video of a projected Derann print does give you an idea what I’m going for:

https://youtu.be/1fohpOUyZjQ

act on instinct said:

DrDre said:

Here’s the current status of the color grading:

So all these tantive shots really started to make my brain itch to the point I had to make a go at one shot just to get it out of my head, still don’t think I got it quite right but keeping in mind all the elements with regards to the teal walls and the technicolor this is where I landed.

Serious respect to you Dre, I could feel my mind unravel trying to work out this puzzle, taking on the whole movie would make my head spin.

With regards to the walls, there’s an element in my version, that’s missing in yours, namely the walls are a greenish/blue color, but the panels on the wall are an off-white color:

When I got that right, everything else also fell in place: blue shirts with gray/brown pants and an off-white helmet for the soldiers. Here I’ve increased the saturation of my version for two shots:

Here’s an update for those shots:

Here’s the current status of the color grading:

Here’s another update:

NeverarGreat said:

A good test I’ve found for these scenes is whether or not Threepio’s leg remains silver. It looks a bit gold here, so I’d keep an eye on that going forward.

Good point! I deliberately went for a touch of warmth for this scene, since that’s what I see on the frames of the 1997 SE print I have. There’s also the reflection of the sand to consider, and the dirt on both droids.

Here’s an update:

44rh1n said:

DrDre said:

Here’s C-3PO and R2-D2’s arrival on Tatooine:

Great work so far! But I can’t help but feel like this particular scene lacks a bit of color separation now. I think some of the blue needs to be brought back into the sky and in R2 just a little bit, to give it the color contrast that it needs. Not to the crazy extent of the 2011 Blu-ray, of course, but just a little bit. (Right now, it’s is feeling kind of like a faded, brownish film print rather than a color-accurate film print). 🙂

There isn’t much color separation for these scenes on the film references (I actually have frames of these scenes). The skies on Tatooine are generally much closer to gray than blue.

Here’s C-3PO and R2-D2’s arrival on Tatooine:

Here’s the capture of Leia/droid escape scene:

Here’s the color grading of Despecialized 3.0 as it stands now:

Here’s an update:

Chewielewis said:

DrDre said:

act on instinct said:

Seeing teal artifacts in the whites.

Those are not teal artifacts. The walls of Tantive IV are a bluish green with creme colored panels. There is some artifacting in some of the shots, which will be fixed, but the walls are not supposed to be white.

Is there any evidence that the walls are supposed to appear as teal on screen. I would imagine the walls were painted teal so they would appear cool white under the tungsten set lighting.

Yes, they appear that way on the 1977, and 1997 prints (of which I have the actual frames), and on the 1989 Derann print, which I recently saw projected. The lighting isn’t Tungsten, but a bit yellowish.

act on instinct said:

Seeing teal artifacts in the whites.

Those are not teal artifacts. The walls of Tantive IV are a bluish green with creme colored panels. There is some artifacting in some of the shots, which will be fixed, but the walls are not supposed to be white.

Here’s the first pass on Leia vs Vader:

act on instinct said:

Very slight but the blues might be taking over there, again very minor and all other changes are improvements, keep up the amazing work Dre!

Yeah, I reduced the blue a bit in the middle shot (image updated).

I felt the colors still lacked some dynamic quality, and were a bit bland, so here’s an update, that I’m very happy with:

Here’s a slight update:

Here’s a first pass on the Leia/R2-D2 corridor scene:

CatBus said:

Question about scene-by-scene vs shot-by-shot: have you seen a significant difference in shot-to-shot variation in the 19SE source vs prints and other sources? i.e. when you say the shot-to-shot variation is inherent to the source, is that mostly ultimately due to the 1977 source in your opinion, or did it get added/boosted somewhere along the restoration pipeline?

Just wondering. Scene by scene looks very nice, and IMO white walls have never done anyone any favors with shot-to-shot color consistency.

From what I can tell the 19SE got a shot by shot color grading, and is overall more consistent shot by shot than the 1977 and 1997 prints.

Darth Dougal said:

DrDre said:

In light of the colors for the Vader/Antilles sequence, that I’m very happy with, I think there’s too much yellow in the earlier shots:

I’m looking at the screen capture on a calibrated monitor and it does not seem too yellow to me. If anything, it just looks desaturated in red/magenta (rebel skin tones) and yellow (Threepio). The middle aged rebel who gets the close up is possibly ‘supposed’ to appear sunburnt, for example. At least that is how he always looked to me on PAL VHS tapes and UK broadcasts.

The video telecines are not good references for color, and generally oversaturated to compensate for the low contrast. I’m using 35mm print frames as a reference for these colors. C-3PO is a brass color, and the rebel soldier has slightly peachy pink skin with red blush.

In light of the colors for the Vader/Antilles sequence, that I’m very happy with, I think there’s too much yellow in the earlier shots:

Dek Rollins said:

Are you still using the D+ capture for your tests?

No, Harmy has shared shots from his master file.

44rh1n said:

DrDre said:

44rh1n said:

DrDre said:

I’ve started work on the colors for Despecialized 3.0

There appears to be quite a bit of splotchy chroma artifacting going on. Is that in the source or is it just the result of crappy web compression? (Are you grading in 10-bit?)

I’m afraid, that’s in the source, although compression may cause it to look worse. I’m using a 10 bit source.

What software are you in? We were having this exact same issue a few weeks ago with Star Wars in Premiere because Premiere defaults to 8-bit processing. But we didn’t have any problems in Resolve, or when we manually enabled 10-bit processing in Premiere.

I’m using Virtualdub to generate individual frames from a 10 bit source. The frames are 8 bit, so I’m probably having the same isdue then, and need to find a way of generating 16 bit frames.

44rh1n said:

DrDre said:

I’ve started work on the colors for Despecialized 3.0

There appears to be quite a bit of splotchy chroma artifacting going on. Is that in the source or is it just the result of crappy web compression? (Are you grading in 10-bit?)

I’m afraid, that’s in the source, although compression may cause it to look worse. I’m using a 10 bit source.