Alright msycamore and timdiggerm, how would you determine the most accurate source?

I've got to base these colors on something. First thing I'm basing it on is what these things actually look like, and stormtrooper armor is white. Correcting for that, it seems that the two most accurate sources are on the bottom, and I'll use both when finalizing the color. Neither the frame scan nor the Senator photo look all that dubious to me.

I'm sorry that this stuff isn't interesting to everyone, but I don't comment in other people's threads about how their type of project just doesn't interest me. If I'm interested, I comment. If I'm not, I don't.

msycamore said:

Why do you base your work on dubious photos and why don't you get any support around here? Are they scared?

Simply because I choose to focus on one of the resources at my disposal does not mean that I don't have others. I'm still sorting through the numerous sources this community has provided, and that will take time. The people here are not scared; several have been extremely helpful.

As to why I base the project on "dubious" photos, it's because those photos are what made me believe that Star Wars could look genuinely beautiful. So that's what makes me passionate about this project. They won't be able to help me correct most of the movie though. That's why I'm gathering many other sources to help.

WE can't avoid any flaws in the new films, save from avoiding the films themselves. Only JJ and his crew can do that.

I'm going to buck the trend and say what was right about the prequels: It re-framed the story of Star Wars as the tragedy and redemption of Anakin Skywalker, thus making them somewhat relevant, in theory if not in reality.

One danger of episodes 7-9 would be to focus on the story of Luke, or (god forbid) Anakin. The story should be re-framed to be about the Skywalker family as a whole, with a focus on the younger generation. Not to say that they shouldn't play a part, but they should never distract from the new leads. Of course Luke should return as an Obi-wan mentor type, and I'd even be open to Anakin's ghost returning at the end of the entire "tri-trilogy" and doing some great feat through the Force to truly atone for his past actions and allow him peace. But keep them to peripheral characters.

Another potential pitfall is the overuse of CG. Take the actors to genuine locations and sets, allow them a realistic world that they can interact with and believe in and I will believe in the world with them. I don't think that JJ intends to skimp on the practical effects, but paradoxically this space opera is best when it's effects are down-to-earth.

How did this project escape my attention? There's some good stuff there, it would be good to see the finished product.

I'm definitely going to consult multiple sources for every shot, but rely most heavily on the technicolor sources when available.

The EU is like a side dish that you can order to go along with the main meal that is the Original Trilogy. I hate that I ate so much of it before realizing that fact.

Okay, that actually looks beautiful. The pixelation makes it look like a painting. Photoshopped for you:

No words...they should have sent a poet

Thank you so much for this resource AntcuFaalb, for the most part the colors are great, and it's nice to see that there appears to be more color consistency between shots than even in the Blu-ray.

However I did notice a heavy green in the shadows of most shots in the movie. Sometimes this looks accurate to my sources, but sometimes it seems like fading or something. In your opinion, do you think the film could have been this green, or did something happen along the line?

I've obsessed over the scene of Leia in the Tantive corridor for a long time, but it's because it's never been right to my satisfaction compared to Mike's superb example. Of course there's a reason for that, as is apparent now. The DVD and Blu-ray have crushed the gradients so much that there is now no discernible color difference between Leia's dress, the Stormtrooper armor, and the walls of the corridor. I've pulled as much blue out of her dress as I could, but I don't believe that the colors can be any more precise with this source. So here it is, as good as I can get it, and it's not going to change any more:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/56460/picture:0

There will be different scenes soon, I promise. :)

That upscale test looks really good!

It's another case of every source being different here. The 35mm print is green, the GOUT is purple, the Blu-ray is pink. And the Senator is red, as far as I can tell:

This is a still taken from the video which is very dark from the outset, so I'm not sure how much to read into this. But it does seem that it has a very strong pink or lilac shift in whatever case, with the shadows remaining quite greenish yellow. I'll post a third pass, but it'll have pink in it for sure.

JEDIT: Here it is.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/56174

It's kind of a cross between the GOUT and the Senator coloration. That's quite enough hassle for one shot.

So here's where I go a bit insane. Is it too much to ask for Lucasfilm to do as good a job on their high definition release as they did with their standard definition release?

I worked so long on the DVD version of this scene, never even suspecting that the Blu-ray would be worse. So here's what I did: The negative1 video has the most detail here, so I placed that into the shot, color corrected the whole thing, and rendered the whole shot in 1080p.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/56007

JEDIT: 2nd pass at this shot: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/56117

Yep, that's one reason why I didn't want it to be so accurate. Not to worry, I'm still in the process of setting up a workflow, so everything will probably get another pass before it's all said and done. I realize now that I need a histogram in the editing program, so the software will change soon. Incidentally, working in 1080p is sloooow!

I probably won't switch to this program, but has anyone here tried Davinci Resolve? I would have downloaded the lite version to test, but it's incompatible with my system.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/55748/picture:0

A second pass at the last screenshots. Chewie is now more accurate to the photo, though not necessarily to the scene.

bttfbrasilfan: That looks almost spot on to the photo in my opinion. I wouldn't want the skin tones to get any greener than the photo however, looking at the skin tones in the rest of the scene. The contrast is probably too high in my version though.

pittrek: Is this in reference to the last three screenshots? Han's armor is quite bright, but on my monitor all the detail is still there.

Here's what I see in the last three pictures: In the first one of Han and Chewie, the lights behind Chewie are blown out, obscuring some of his fur. This is probably the most severe visible loss of detail that I can see. Some of the colors are blown out in the histogram though, now that I look at it in Photoshop. I really wish Premiere Elements had a histogram function!

fmalover: What details have been lost? Nitpicking is necessary in order to keep me on my toes! ;)

Having just worked through a (almost) shot-by-shot correction of the control room scene, I begin to appreciate the effort it took Harmy to do his correction. And that's only 1/30th of the film! I just compared my version of the scene to Despecialized, and they're not all that different. I bumped up the saturation on the Despecialized playback, and they were quite comparable in many ways. The saturation levels may be the biggest difference between them, other than a slight bluish-green tint on Harmy's version which is very characteristic of the Blu-ray and is remarkably difficult to remove. I may be overzealous in removing it as some of that could be accurate.

You_Too: This project has a similar history. I spent the better part of a year, on and off, working with the problems in the DVD in preparation for the comprehensive work and getting to know the film. Everything has the same seven layers of correction even before I work on individual shots.

Thanks frank!

There are some projects made by OT members which should help this project along, but which ones to use? I'm thinking AntcuFaalb's Pre-ANH Star Wars Bootleg for the original colortiming. Thoughts?

JEDIT:

Here are the last three screenshots from the control room scene which correspond to the Senator photos:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/55562/picture:0

Almost every shot in that scene had to be isolated and corrected separately, but that scene is practically done...for now!

So here's how I'm thinking of tackling this monster: First I'll use the primary sources (the Senator pictures and video) to correct those shots, as I've started doing. I'll be able to use some of these photos to correct entire scenes (such as the control room scene above). However the majority of the film will have no primary sources at all, so it will remain unfinished until sources from a Technicolor print become available. There are several projects (such as the Legacy Edition) which should eventually provide excellent resources, so that work will wait.

There is something that I'm sure someone here could help with. My library of reference photos is lacking. Does anyone know where I could find color set photos, such as of Sir Alec Guinness or Harrison Ford in costume for example?

Thanks, I'm working on that scene right now, so it is useful. It's good to know that Luke had green hair in a version other than the Technicolor. Very cool. It would be good to have some version of the Special Edition and the originals (other than the GOUT) to compare.

New Screenshots: 1: Han Control Room, 2: Luke Control Room, 3: Final Shot.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/55424/picture:0

A New Hope Technicolor Recreation v2 is available on MySpleen.

V3, which is a slightly more compact encode of V2 but otherwise identical, is also available via PM.

All requests for further changes will be directed to the trash compactor, to be used as food for the Dianoga. 😉

Downloadable Comparison Gallery (in progress)

A lightweight V1 is also available on Myspleen.

Original Post Follows:

Here it is; a shot-by-shot color corrected and slightly despecialized version of the Star Wars ANH 2011 Blu-ray!

The goal for this project is to correct the atrocious color of the blu-ray and adapt it to the look of a 1977 Technicolor film while at the same time using the 2004 German HD broadcast to remove the most baffling 2011 changes.

In addition, using other sources, I am fixing hundreds of individual color and luminance issues throughout the film including crushed highlights, miscolored lights and lasers, missing gradients, and bad individual frames. Essentially this is the Special Edition seen in the best possible light.

One reason that I am not performing a full despecialization is that this project will be the basis of Harmy’s fully Despecialized Edition version 3.0, so it makes sense to have an SE version of the film for those who want it or want to make their own semi-despecialized versions of the film. I am also interested in seeing what the added footage such as the Jabba scene will look like with '77 color.

The despecializations involve reverting the 2011 Blu-ray to the 2004 edition using the German HD broadcast, with a few exceptions. The reversions are:
-Returning R2’s jump cut roll in the Tantive IV secondary corridor
-Recreating the SE mountain removal in the '77 version of the Binary Sunset, since the Blu-ray has extremely degraded color and detail.

-Removing the ‘Ghost Luke’ homestead artifact introduced in the Special Edition
-Removing the rocks around R2-D2 in the Tusken Attack
-Returning the color of the degraded SE shots to their original color

-Replacing the 2004 recomposited Lightsaber effects with '77 film versions (The SE lightsabers often have incorrect colors and clearly use degraded elements to the point that the lightsaber effect is just a misshapen blob, making them impossible to correct without additional luminosity detail)

2011 Blu-ray changes that remain:
-The gray escape pod door is averaged with the original blue version, since the blue is over-represented in the Blu-ray
-The Han/Greedo shootout, since unlike the 2004 version they both shoot at essentially the same time, and a fully despecialized version of this scene requires Harmy’s skill and resources

Sources for this project are the photos and video of the Technicolor Star Wars projection in the Senator Theater, screenshots that Mike Verta has made available on his website, the 2004 HDTV Broadcast, Team Blu’s GOUT, Team Blu’s '97 version, Team -1’s Silver Screen Edition, Technicolor frame scans, and numerous set and costume photos.

Current status of project as of 5-25-18: Version 1 is available as a 20gb encode on the spleen and a 34gb encode through PM.

Project status as of 9-20-23: Version 3 is available via PM. Note that I consider this project complete, so there will be no further updates or any use of the 2019 digital version of the film, which has its own issues.

Questions, comments, complaints, nitpicking, over-analyzing, opinions, speculation, and wild theories are welcome.

Thanks, I will!

But I think that the time has come to move to a different thread. My goal was to find global settings that fix many of the problems of the film, and these have been found. It's a seven page word document right now, so I can post that here or send it to whoever is interested, just say the word.

Today saw a big test: applying these settings to the Blu-ray. The source is the 1080p disc, in all its glory. I'll let the results speak for themselves:

Fine detail:

Now the scene-by-scene (and shot by shot) correction can begin. Who knows when it will end?

This project has been in hibernation for a while as I figure out how it should continue, but here's a small update:

I've done a shot-by-shot correction of the Death Star explosion rather slavishly from the video of the Senator screening:

https://vimeo.com/82958022

Password: DS

Apparently the Death Star is quite blue in that shot. I suspect that the desaturation of the explosion for the DVD stems from a decision to make the Death Star a neutral gray, which then carried over to the explosion itself.

Comparison of the final shot:

Sorry about the lack of updates recently, there's been a lot of school and a lot of education happening.

I'd help out with this, but I'm not sure where to do that. I'm guessing people know this, but I found an old auction on Ebay from February which claims that the print was sold for 490 dollars. If this is the same one, the buyer will make a good profit. Here's the listing:

What, Palpatine was one of the only cool things about them. The prequels should have been from his perspective. It's not easy to hoodwink an entire galaxy, unless their representatives are complete idiots.

Oh. ohhh.