dlvh

Spaced Ranger said:

DrDre said:

The problem is not in the algorithm, but in the quality of the reference. …
So, if the reference is of high enough quality, the algorithm can probably reproduce it, to a high degree of accuracy. …
The algorithm is in a sense a form of automated curves adjustment. … The curves are adjusted, by matching the cumulative probability distributions for the red, green, and blue channels.

If the source wasn’t damaged as much as is the Star Wars Blu-ray (crushed, blown, stretched, noised), that would be half-the-battle won. Perhaps a uniform (read “simple”) prep to roughly “straighten the picture” might lessen your need to tweak so much.

I took the Blu-ray picture through 2 passes of JPEG-DNR (1st low, 2nd high) to reduce that awful Lucas-noise™ on everything (no, those aren’t age spots on Tarkin's skin; Luke has them, too) while minimizing edge blurring (multiple “lower” passes do better than one “maximum” pass) . .

and an R-G-B contrast adjustment (to a rough approximation of the reference) while setting an upper & lower headroom for the crushed & blown picture . .

That’s it! Simple settings, quick to do, and now it’s prepped (for your regrade) . .

Actually, the prep-result looks amazingly good, with colors magically coming close to on-the-set reality. (The way it was messed up, the entire Blu-ray should be dealt with this easily.)

And, no, I didn’t cheat. Check out this sequence comparison with a full-size area for close inspection. I included an extra column to show the result if DNR is skipped. SPOILER: the noise gets noticeably worse (!) because normal contrasting, needed to bring the picture back, emphasizes that, too.

Top-row is the Blu-ray; Middle-row is JPEG-DNR; Bottom-row is contrast & headroom adjustment:

I wonder if the full-size prepped picture, run it through your regrade process, would come out looking more (or exactly) like your reference picture of choice?

Can these settings be applied to the entire movie before working in a program such as Adobe Premiere?

DrDre said:

It’s fine. 😃 Here’s my adjustment. It needed a red boost in the darker tones, and I’ve made it a little brighter. Somehow the eyes look more alive with the boosted blue tones, compared to some of the earlier attempts, but I think this is the one for me:

I don’t have that exact frame, but how is this?

I’m thinking that these colors are looking pretty decent:

Cushing’s uniform has decent colors, and the walls are a “Proper Blue”? Saturation might be a bit too high though?

NeverarGreat posted this:

I really like this a lot…Nice!

DrDre said:

I’ve also settled on my grading for the Death Star conference room scene:

I think I like those colors Dre. Both uniforms match, and the colors of the walls look good as well. Nice job!

What do you fellows believe the exact colors should be, of both the '77 and '81 crawls?

As many of you know, I, like Faithwyn, am all for preserving the '77 opening crawl, big surprise there, eh?

Harmy said:

I’m simply saying, that just because this source fits what looks correct to you, doesn’t make it correct and that all other prints we’ve seen had the walls blue/green, so I don’t see what makes this one right, when it is the one that stands out among all the others.
And the JSC is definitelly red-shifted, as is the '93 THX master.

Fair enough Harmy, let’s just say that we agree to disagree on this point. I agree with Darth Lucas, that maybe all the walls on the Death Star aren’t straight neutral Grey, but have some Green/Blue color in them…just a bit, but to see versions out there that have all sorts of wild Blues, Purples and Cyan…among other colors…is not believable, if looked at compared to some newly-found reasonable source(s).

You Harmy, are working on DeEd version 3.0, might I ask, which coloring are you going with on that version? the more “colorful”, like on 2.5 & 2.6, or the the more neutral Grey similar to this one? in the Death Star coloring, I mean.

Thanks Darth Lucas!

A VERY quick edit though…mine

And yours:

Thought maybe your whites were a little bit blown out.

Darth Lucas,

What can your 2 pass system, do for this shot?

So Harmy, You’re stating that we should rely on/accept the color timing of past sources, that you’re showing in your DeEd versions…and certainly other versions, which produces these Green/Blue Death Star walls, more than that of a source that produces a more neutral Grey, but has a suspected fading or manipulated past?

I don’t necessarily think these regraded shots posted by Dr.Dre are perfect, but with a little fine tuning, Dre, and or other members on this forum, could likely produce a more reliable and refined color timing result, than the one that is currently relied on, which gives us such “suspect” color timing…especially on the inside shots of the Death Star, don’t you think?

Here is what the DeEd version 2.6 shot looks like:

And the same frame from TN1’s SSE:

These are looking real good Dre. Keep them coming, especially ones from inside the Death Star, please.

towne32 said:

ilovejarjar said:

towne32 said:

ilovejarjar said:

Are we seeing the first Despecialized version not to be released by Harmy?

Nope! Marvins and Laserschwert have also done localizations using Harmy’s lossless encodes. And >Laserschwert’s ESB had some 35mm upgrades, so he was allowed to call it ESB 2.1 I believe. 😃

Thanks for clearing that up. I’m looking forward to your colour-corrected version from Harmy’s lossless master.

Thanks. Still looking for people to check the test render for errors.

If you want another set of eyes, I can take a look…if you want.

NeverarGreat said:

Here’s an example of the changing color of the walls from the Blu-ray (uncorrected). This sequence has some horrible color smearing that seems to be on every version of the film from 77 onward, but it’s also clear evidence of the wall sections being painted different colors:

The wall on the left has about ten points more green than the one directly beside it, and neither are gray according to the blu-ray.

JEDIT: Yes, Mike has also said that the walls were painted different colors - see his discussion about the wall sections abutting the droid alcove across from the Falcon, which was intended as a more neutral gray.

The Bluray is so messed up, it has so many random colors just put in that scene for no apparent reason. I guess they could paint it, but I don’t know why they would, but I’m not counting it out. If you look at that scene, the ceiling already has lights in there, and that by itself would change the coloring, but if there were people from the crew that said there were different paint colors, than they would know.

Here is a shot, showing the ceiling lights and the different “paint” color, if they did indeed painted there, and you can see that it’s a different shade of…green. However, even if true, and I shouldn’t doubt that it is, surely, the Bluray cannot be taken as any sort of decent source to go by…IMHO:

towne32 said:

Darth Lucas said:

dlvh said:

Darth Lucas said:

jacksparrow900 said:

The uniforms were olive color according to the Star Wars Costume book.

From what I’ve seen of behind the scenes photos and such, this olive color seems to be accurate. Certain lighting may have changed that slightly in the final film, plus 35mm film tends to go a little bit green in shadowy areas, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near the deep green that I’ve seen in a lot of restorations here.

If you work under the assumption, as I tend to do, that they weren’t trying to do weird, unnatural looking things with the colors, then you can correct Death Star walls to look mostly grey, and low and behold, tarkin’s uniform comes out looking olive.

Do you have a picture of what you are thinking the color would have looked like? Or are my examples of the color several posts ago, fairly accurate?

I’m no expert on the accurate color, but just based on what seems natural and working from the assumption like I said that they probably weren’t trying to do anything unnatural and weird with the color, I’d say your example seems to be pretty damn close.

I agree with you that they probably weren’t trying to do anything incredibly unnatural with the color (overly green, red, etc). But whether or not that means grey walls probably depends on each individual set. In some cases, where the sets were blue or blue/green, surely the grey timing is the unnatural timing?

Most all of the good quality publicity photos and or stills of the Death Star interior that I have seen, both past and current, show the walls to be a dark grey, but there does seem to be some shots/scenes that have other colors on them…mainly do to lighting, I think. I am not certain though, that I dare rely on my memory from seeing it in '77 to say if those are correct, or not.

Edit…I dare saying after doing a bit more research, that all the walls were painted dark grey, and then lit colorfully, when needed or desired, to give scenes “lively hood” if it was deemed necessary. Also, there are some scenes in the Death Star, where Hans shirt is a bright yellow, and after properly correcting them, miraculously, the walls turn closer to the dark grey.

Darth Lucas said:

jacksparrow900 said:

The uniforms were olive color according to the Star Wars Costume book.

From what I’ve seen of behind the scenes photos and such, this olive color seems to be accurate. Certain lighting may have changed that slightly in the final film, plus 35mm film tends to go a little bit green in shadowy areas, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near the deep green that I’ve seen in a lot of restorations here.

If you work under the assumption, as I tend to do, that they weren’t trying to do weird, unnatural looking things with the colors, then you can correct Death Star walls to look mostly grey, and low and behold, tarkin’s uniform comes out looking olive.

Do you have a picture of what you are thinking the color would have looked like? Or are my examples of the color several posts ago, fairly accurate?

Darth Lucas said:

dlvh said:

Darth Lucas said:

Not that it matters, but here’s an adjustment of the Tarkin shot I did in Photoshop. I labor no delusions of this being accurate, but to my flawed eyes, it looks good.

I see no difference, other than a slight decrease in saturation, but then again, I’m older than most of you folks here.

Funny considering this was done entirely with curves adjustments and there is no change in saturation whatsoever.

EDIT: You probably interpret this as a decrease in saturation based on my correcting the shot based on the assumption that the lights are white and the walls are grey. You can see the result of this by the fact there there is now more red and less green in Tarkin’s uniform and face compared to DrDre and Harmy’s corrections.

Now that you write it, and I look at it with a fine-tooth comb, I can just barely see a difference. I like both yours and Harmys, but I see Harmys has more saturation in Vader’s belts green lights.

Told you that I’m getting old, and the eyes are the first thing to go, in some people…lol

Darth Lucas said:

Not that it matters, but here’s an adjustment of the Tarkin shot I did in Photoshop. I labor no delusions of this being accurate, but to my flawed eyes, it looks good.

I see no difference, other than a slight decrease in saturation, but then again, I’m older than most of you folks here.

towne32 said:

dlvh said:

DrDre said:

I’ve finally settled on a grading for the Owen/C-3PO shot:

I like it…although, I hate to beat this picture up, but isn’t there still some Magenta in Owen’s tunic where his sleeve starts, and isn’t Luke’s hand quite pink.

I again tinkered, and came up with this to try and get rid of those things:

Opinions…either good or bad?

Well, it looks like you’ve made the sky more teal and it might be getting too bright. The hand is perhaps a little pink in Dre’s. But not bad. Perhaps the overall saturation could take a slight decrease. But I feel like he got the levels balanced the best (so far) in his attempt.

Thanks…edit:

Harmy said:

I’m sorry, but to me that Tarkin shot looks bad. It’s too dark, over-saturated and his face is splotchy.
I took the BD screenshot and this is what I came up with after a quick Photoshop adjustment:

For comparison, here are the images posted by Dre:

I’ve got to agree with Harmy here. DrDre’s adjustment of Peter Cushing looks way too dark, and has too much contrast to it, look at the lights in the background in his versus Harmy’s, and the shadow of Cushing on the chair, is no where to be found on DrDre’s version.

Also…the color of Cushing’s uniform is more in-line on Harmy’s edit.

DrDre said:

I’ve finally settled on a grading for the Owen/C-3PO shot:

I like it…although, I hate to beat this picture up, but isn’t there still some Magenta in Owen’s tunic where his sleeve starts, and isn’t Luke’s hand quite pink.

I again tinkered, and came up with this to try and get rid of those things:

Opinions…either good or bad?

Welcome YveX.

DrDre said:

I’ve updated the color grading on this shot, inspired by Darth Lucas’s grading, that I really like:

Looks nice…a little more contrast?, more Red? and the sky is a nicer Blue, than in some earlier posts:

Did you also turn up the Saturation a bit as well?

I think these are close…a Grey/Green:

or perhaps:

…I wouldn’t mind taking a few orders from her…(SLAP) Oh shoot…the wife’s here!

Lol…too funny.

Alright, this begs the question then…Shouldn’t the uniforms be adjusted, to show that Blue like it is at the Celebration scene? Or Can’t that be adjusted properly? Or do we still think that color would be wrong here?

Here is that snap shot from the SSE:

I’ve found a picture that I guess I have never paid much attention to, until a couple of days ago now.

Look behind Luke and Han, and you’ll see the exact same Rebel soldiers that were fighting on the Tantive IV, in the very beginning of the movie, in their Blue uniforms. I’ve often wondered if the color of their uniforms were indeed a Blue, or Grey-Blue, or what? But if any of you needed a reference to go by to what they should look like at the beginning of the movie, there it is.

This screen shot was taken off of the SSE edition, but other editions are very similar in color:

Just so you can see, here it is from DeEd v2.6:

I also never commented on your Reel 4 preview here NeverarGreat, and it’s appended version, but they both look great, but I do like the appended version a bit better.

Nice work!