You_Too

Frank, you're right. I think the reason I wanted to experiment with lowering the saturation was that I'm also used to the GOUT as it is, very desaturated, and it takes a while to get used to the vibrant colors. But just like you I realized that it indeed looks very good! It's probably much closer to how the print used for the GOUT actually looked when it was brand new.

Now if there was only a way to completely remove smearing!

EDIT: I wanted to add some more comparison shots to this post. This time I'm comparing some of the famous 70mm scans against the GOUT with my latest settings, with some comments about them.

In this shot, the shots match quite well except slightly different gamma. Of course I'll keep my version this bright since I don't want to crush the shadow detail.

In this shot, the 70mm scan has an obvious green tint, but also shows the reds being brighter. That's because I had to reduce the reds to get rid of the oversaturated reds in some scenes and to make skin tones look more correct.

The first thing you notice here is that my version has more green in it, which not only makes it look more realistic, but also a bit brighter. In the 70mm scan, the difference in gamma is most clearly seen when looking at Han and Luke's hair.

Those who look close can see that the red lights on the wall panel are pink tinted in the 70mm scan and orange tinted in mine. That color "error" is in the GOUT even without my settings, and I can't do anything to fix it without ruining skin tones.

Here the most obvious thing is the difference in color of the pilots' clothes. That's because of the same thing as the last comparison: My version has more green in it.

After a lot of analyzing the colors of ESB and the other movies, I've come to the conclusion that mine is more correct, (Or at least more natural) just check the skin tones. The greyscale in my version is also much more balanced than in the 70mm scans. I think the loss of green in the 70mm scans might be because of fading. (Or did it really look like this in the cinema? Would be weird simply because of the pink skin tones in my opinion.)

Same thing here but less obvious: More green in my version. The 70mm scan also has a gamma curve resulting in a darker picture with some loss of shadow detail. Just look at the panels on wall to the left of Chewie.

I won't include any comparison with the ROTJ 70mm scans since first of all they're not many, and second, they're so red tinted that they aren't even useful for a comparison.

frank678 said:

Wow! I don't know how you did it but everything seems to have more presence with this new change. All the faces seem to be more full-bodied, like real solid objects and less like flat images - how did you do this?

Yeah I agree! I ended up with this by trying more changes, simple as that!

frank678 said:

You gotta post a clip with this setting!

The advances you have made since your first attempt are impressive - this one is a major advance.

I will post a clip soon for sure. And yeah, there's been a lot of advances but that's how it is. Working progressively one eventually ends up with a good result. Takes some time but in this case it sure was worth it.

EDIT: I made a couple minor new updates for the script. The first one is I lowered the saturation just slightly, so the movies don't feel too oversaturated. I got that feeling especially with skin tones. Now it feels a bit more natural but still more colorful than the raw GOUT.

I also changed the values for the resize at the bottom of the script. Now it corrects the aspect ratio while keeping all vertical lines of pixels. Though it's for the PAL version, of course.

EDIT: After weighing pros and cons I decided to leave the saturation. When I lowered it, it took away a bit of that overall theatrical print look. With saturation unchanged, the movies look more like those 70mm scans and I think that's not a bad thing!

Just watched the latest clip and it looks great! Good job on restoring the lasers and explosions.

Ok, so for this christmas eve, here are some comparisons using some brand new settings.

This time I really feel like I've nailed it. I've balanced the gamma so that details in faces and such things are much more visible like in the theatrical print, yet I've managed to keep black and white levels without clipping. Even though dark parts of the picture are slightly darker, it's more gamma balanced and you can still find all the fine grain in the shadows.

So look at these screenshots, they're simply beautiful. And have a merry christmas everyone!

I've also updated the first post with these settings used on all three movies.

Just wanted to wish everyone here a merry christmas. I haven't been a member for long, but already I've found good friends and I'm looking forward to spending the next year with you guys as well!

And I'll take a look on the new clip later tonight Harmy.

msycamore said:

Or you guys could always wait until I do my own color corrected version straight from the raw files, I wouldn't recommend to re-render my DVD release with a new color setting, not just because of the quality loss a re-encode would present, but there is simply too much chroma noise on it, I don't think the resulting image would be that pleasant. But feel free to do it if you want to.

Yeah, I'm not going to do it now anyway. It will be interesting to see your new version! Actually I haven't even seen the old one yet, since I've been too busy with color correction... haha

msycamore said:

Your color corrected GOUT pics look very good, You_Too.

As the GOUT transfers have white clipping already, I would be careful to not introduce even more. The whites seems to be a little hot in a few places.

Thanks, and yeah I am very careful. When doing curve adjustments I make sure that whites are preserved, so when you see something that looks clipped, it is just pushed towards white but nothing gets clipped. Same with the shadow detail. I'm preserving both the white and black levels.

Also, this kind of gamma curve adjustments can fool the eye to think that details get clipped when they don't. I found a good way to preserve them so don't worry!

OMEN!-_-! said:

You_Too, nice grading here! This latest change is a great improvement imho. I think you're pretty close here, whites look fairly accurate but the flesh tones are still a little too orange, at least on my monitor. Star Wars looks the best with these settings but ESB suffers more. Vader's lightsaber shot in ESB looks a little too orangy red to me so i'm sure reducing the yellow and red slightly should help all three films imho. Apart from that single change, you're pretty much spot on colour grading from where i'm standing. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the feedback, I at least won't reduce any red and yellow using curves, because I've found a very nice balance and the greyscale all over the movies seems pretty accurate when point sampling in photoshop, RGB being very close to each other most of the time.

Also with the lightsaber, don't trust your eyes too much. I analyzed the color in that shot and it's red with just as much green as blue in it, so it is not orange-tinted at all, but a clean red.

Always remember I'm point/average sampling the screenshots a lot in photoshop to make sure the greyscale is balanced, since it's the most important thing for the colors to look correct.

The skin tones being slightly "orange-ish" in SW is simply because first of all, like I said before the reds blend together with other colors and when trying to find balance, some elements in some shots will suffer slightly while some won't.

I've also seen some screenshots from theatrical prints where the skin looked orange too, so the source print for the GOUT might even have been like that. And remember that the skin colors are very pink in the raw GOUT, so a slight shift towards orange was necessary in some scenes. You see it even more since SW needed more saturation than the other movies as well, to be able to squeeze more detail out of the least saturated colors.

Either way, I found a good balance and I'll probably stick with it, unless I get some very technical proof which convinces me to think again. :)

frank678 said:

It's o.k. I can see the difference now- in the sky behind the landspeeder being stopped by stormtroopers in Mos Eisley.

My preference is still for the previous setting - I prefer the old lighter blue sky to the new darker blue sky

I understand, everyone has their preferences, but I'll probably stick with the current settings since the greyscale at least seems to show I've found a good balance, and it doesn't look cyan-tinted anymore.

EDIT: And here comes a little test clip!

http://www.multiupload.com/HJCE5C19AK

I also want to add to what I said before that I have a monitor which I calibrated with a colorimeter, which is should I say almost a must when working with color correction. This might also be why you guys think I should add blue, or remove yellow, or remove red etc. You might not even see the same colors I see!

Before I settle for some final settings I will probably watch the movies sometime on my TV which is even more accurately calibrated, to make sure it looks good and balanced.

EDIT: And another addition! A couple before/after shots from the scenes in that clip:

Thank you g-force!

We'll see if I do the Technidisc sometime, I still haven't downloaded that version yet.

Harmy, your work continues to amaze me. I'm sorry I first thought this was a joke! You have some true talent and I totally loved what you did to the crawl.

frank678 said:

I'll have to double check properly later but my initial impression is they are all too blue now. I prefer the Star Wars settings you had just before this updated one (which bested the savestarwars.com gout correct and lee thorogood technicolor project to my eyes).

I think the reason why you think they're too blue might be the vibrance setting I'm using. You see, it digs up the least saturated colors which you sometimes couldn't even see in the raw GOUT. (It even digs up some minor color noise that seems to be all over the movies) Also keep in mind that the GOUT is sourced from a film print which might have been slightly faded as well.

And I'll tell you exactly what I changed compared to the old settings: I increased the vibrance to make it even more saturated and dig up more "lost" colors. I added a curve which increases red gamma so the picture doesn't come out as cyan-tinted as it did with the old settings. (I checked this closely so I didn't overdo it, but made it balanced) I also decreased the amount of red in yellows, to compensate for the saturation and red gamma increase.

That said, when comparing these two settings, they are not that different, and the new one does look better. To prove this I made a comparison of screenshots. Each shot in it is divided. Left half is old settings and right half is new. If you have a hard time noticing it, check the shot of the jawas carrying R2.

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/8991/differenceo.jpg

I also want to tell you that I tried some settings where I almost completely removed the cyan tint which is seen here and there, but the movie came out lifeless and desaturated-feeling. I think the movie probably can't look much better unless a better source is used. I believe we have the film print to blame. Though I'd say my settings improve the GOUT a lot, and I'm proud I've come this far!

pittrek said:

They look OK. Did you also change the script according to your newest settings ? I'd like to do a small test encode to see it in motion

I will make a test encode sometime soon. I've updated post 4 with the new scripts and link for the curve files.

After working with this for some hours, I managed to find some settings that worked well on all three movies!

At first they all came out with a bit of a cyan tint, giving them a look similar to the 70mm scans, but in the end I chose to go for balance instead and added some more red, since the cyan in the 70mm scans is probably because of fading. The only difference between the movies is that I set the saturation higher for SW since it was more desaturated than the other two.

I also added a setting in the script that corrects the aspect ratio. I will change it to a more proper setting later to avoid the loss in resolution that it causes.

Check the screenshots out in the first post, and tell me what you think!

Ok, but that's great news! You're making a great progress.

Harmy said:

And guys... Merry Christmas:

You serious?!

That's a cleaned up version of the frame from Mike's site! You found a way to make yours look that good or is it a joke? :)

dark_jedi said:

The OOP DVD is also letterboxed, it isn't even anamorphic, but who needs the old DVD now when we have this, and yes, if it wasn't for Netflix HD streaming the HD version of the Theatrical Cut this project would have never been.

Rutracker seems to have another HD broadcast of the theatrical but it's zoomed in to 16:9, so it's great that netflix had the anamorphic original. I'm not 100% sure it's the theatrical on rutracker but the runtime listed is shorter than the blu-ray.

frank678 said:

Of course, if anyone else knows a better way to correct the GOUT than what I'm doing, feel free to suggest something!

I know a way but unfortunately it will involve breaking into Lucasfilm, theft, and a possible jail term.

Burglary, theft, jail... the dark side of the force are they. :)

Darth Tater said:

Obviously, you are putting a considerable amount of work into this.

Actually, compared to what Harmy is doing for example, I'd say I don't put much work into this. Maybe an hour or two per day. :)

Darth Tater said:

Is there a reason behind doing this type of adjustment for the whole film and not per scene? Is that a practical or technical limitation, or both? Just curious. I don't know what additional work it would imply compared to what you're doing already.

The reason is that the GOUT, just like the blu-ray, has some obvious color errors running through the entire film, and I think correcting those are first of all a step in the right direction, and it's also a good ground for anyone who would want to take the next step to do a complete scene by scene correction.

I'm not doing a scene by scene because last time I did such a huge project, I found myself working too much, being too perfectionist about things, and in the end I just felt burned out. So I guess the biggest limitation is simply my personality.

And there is a technical limitation to it as well, you see, if I really really wanted to do a scene by scene the correct way, I'd have to pick out every element of the frames somehow and color correct them separately. The reason for that is that the source doesn't have clean enough colors to be able to "dig up the original" from it.

For example, faces' skin color and lip color are melting together in the GOUT. So if I change the hue of red to make faces look less pink, the lips will end up with an unnatural color. I posted a picture earlier in the thread which is a good example of this:

Notice how in the theatrical scan, Tarkin's face has more separated colors while in the GOUT his whole face has pretty much the same hue.

So bottom line: A complete correction, scene by scene with separated frame elements, is beyond what I can and have the patience to do.

Of course, if anyone else knows a better way to correct the GOUT than what I'm doing, feel free to suggest something!

frank678 said:

That's cool. At least you found out the limit to what can be done with the Gout with one setting/curve. Are you able to post a short clip in due course of one of the scenes thats come out most successful?

Yeah I guess I could post a clip sometime. Anyway, still some small tweaks to be done, and I'll also have to decide whether I'm gonna use vibrance or just raise saturation, since vibrance seems to affect dark scenes a bit more, making brighter scenes seem less saturated. We'll see!

Here are some more comparison shots:

Cobra Kai said:

PC-Max said:

I just have one question to those die hards out there. The SW the scene where Luck and Ben get stopped by the Stormtroopers in Mos Eisley. Two droids, white and yellow, pass in front of the camera. Now the White droid kinda feels right but the yellow feels added as it takes up more of the screen and REALLY breaks the viewers focus on the main characters. Is the yellow an addition or is it that I have not seen the original for so long in its purity that I have just forgotten it happened?

Merry Christmas people!

 

Yep, that yellow droid has always been there.

I've always found that yellow droid distracting too, but it's much better than a big Ronto covering the whole screen! :)

pittrek said:

First of all - what are you trying to accomplish ? Are you trying to re-create the ORIGINAL colours of the theatrical version or are you trying to get colours which will "feel" correct ?

Like I said in the first post, I'm trying to make the best possible "one-setting" for the whole movie. Unfortunately I wouldn't be able to recreate the theatrical version that way, but I can correct the color errors that run through the whole movie. (For example too much red overall, yellows looking green, faces looking pink etc)

Actually I don't think I have the patience needed to do a scene by scene correction of the whole thing, (and that would also need more reference materials) but I feel this is a step in the right direction, just like my blu-ray settings.

frank678 said:

Understood. If you can get an invite to his forums he would probably be the best authority on what goes where, if he were willing to look at Gout correction.

I am a member of his forum but I know how busy he is with his own project so unless I really need some advice I don't think I'll bother him with this.

And I have to tell you, yesterday I made lots of new curves and settings and did some multiple settings with SatMask (vibrance) to try and only saturate the colors that most needed it. After some hours of trying a lot of stuff, I didn't manage to improve the settings I've already showed you, at least not much.

The thing I tried the most to fix was the hue of cyan, to make for example Obi-Wan's lightsaber look blue in the duel with Vader. I found that changing the hue of cyan affected not only lightsabers but many elements in the movie, I'll name a few: The rebel soldiers' shirts in the beginning, the sky on Tatooine, R2's hologram of Leia, Greedo's skin color, the Death Star interior and exterior walls.

Considering that, I might just settle with the current settings, or maybe tweak them slightly. Then I guess it's time to move on to ESB.

frank678 said:

Just an opinion but the colour in even Mike's screenshots seems 'off' somehow.

The resolution and detail are incredibly lifelike  - but not the colours somehow. 

Of course they seem off. He hasn't corrected them yet! I won't say more though since he's asked us to keep it in his forum.

frank678 said:

Look at the colours in this compared to those Legacy frames:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/687/14030018.jpg/

(All you have to do is make the GOUT match this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

First of all, those shots are all taken with a camera off a screen. Second, there's an obvious kinda yellow tint in that scene, at least in the shadows.

In GOUT, that scene is kinda cyan/blue-ish which means if I match it to that screenshot, more yellow scenes like some on Tatooine will be VERY yellow. The ending ceremony is also a bit too yellow already with my settings.

I think it's obvious that the GOUT comes from some much more inconsistent prints than the Senator version. Had the GOUT been sourced from a technicolor print, it would've been MUCH easier to dig up all that color the right way.

So bottom line, don't get your hopes up too high! I'm still trying to balance everything though, and to find a better way to increase saturation, so I might find a way to make it look better, but it won't ever be close to technicolor.

It is very hard to reach a "perfect" result without taking out each element in each frame and change the colors separately, so naturally, no matter what I do with this it won't look completely perfect.

I understand your point though, and I'm trying to make it as balanced as possible and to recover as much color as possible without oversaturating it. I won't go for the look of the JSC though since in my opinion there's either too much yellow or too much green overall.

The biggest problem right now, is that when using vibrance to dig up some desaturated colors, some scenes are affected in a bad way since the movie is very inconsistent with colors. Here's that rebel soldier closeup using my current script:

It's one of those shots that come out with a bit stronger colors.

Interesting! It doesn't match but it reminds a lot of my current result.

I've updated my settings in post 4 now. Still keep in mind though that the crop values are for the PAL version.

Some more random comparisons with the raw GOUT:

In some shots like this last one with Obi-Wan, the colors turn out more saturated for some reason. Still trying to find some way to balance this as well.

frank678 said:

HOLY SMOKES !!! That looks really good!

Also the Leia frame looks just like the Legacy frame posted in this thread

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/StarWarsLegacy-com-The-Official-Thread/post/544995/

Keep up the good work!

Yeah, Mike's screenshots are the best reference we have so far.

There's a bit more red in his shot though, but when I tried to increase red in mine, other shots looked too red. So I'm still trying to find the best balance!

I've updated the screenshots at the top now with the latest settings.

I did find a balance which enhanced the faces and stuff a bit without clipping whites.

This is how Tarkin looks now, raw GOUT compared to my settings:

The reason he comes out different compared to Harmy's version is of course the source which looks very different. And since I'm making settings for the whole movie I can't pick elements out and color separately.

Here's some more comparisons:

I know the colors are a bit strong in the sunset scene, and I'll see what I can do about it with some adjustments later.

One thing I want to do here is also to correct the overall gamma curve of the movie a bit.

Here's an example, a comparison of a scan from jedi1.net and a frame from GOUT with my latest settings:

The first thing you think when looking at Tarkin's face there, is that parts of his face are much more highlighted and defined in the 70mm scan. I wanna point out though, that I don't use those scans as a color reference since they're all faded in different ways and this one for example has too much cyan in the shadows.

Anyway, now I've applied a quick curve-fix for this. Top image: GOUT with my settings, bottom: added curve-fix.

Note that this is just an example though, and I tried to be a bit more subtle, like finding a middle between the scan's look and GOUT.

Now the problem this creates, is that some other scenes are suffering of white clipping and such. Here's that shot from Ben's hut again, with the same curve-fix applied:

Here's a picture showing what got clipped in that shot:

What I need to do now is to find a good balanced setting that improves that kind of definition and highlights but doesn't ruin the brighter shots.

I also want to ask you guys if you would think it's ok to sacrifice a little bit of the brightest whites if the result was more balance and definition in the rest of the image?