kk650

Everybody is welcome to their opinion. Just because you and DrDre agree on something doesn’t make it fact.

I can see the difference between the original 35mm image and the colour matched shot, the fact that you and DrDre cannot tells me that either your monitor is not as sensitive to differences in colour/image dynamics as mine or you simply don’t have the experience I do colour grading. I have created over 200 releases and with each release I have learnt something new. That experience adds up and gives you insight that others less experienced may not have. There is a big difference between analysing single frames out of context and actually regrading a whole film so it looks good the whole way through.

When you remove a blanket tint of course shot by shot colour inconsistencies will increase, because the blanket tints were added in part to hide said inconsistencies, but targeting single frames you don’t like because they are not completely colour balanced and arguing the whole release needs to be redone is silly, a whole film is never going to have every shot completely colour balanced so the sky always has the same colour in every shot, consecutive shots are often shot at different times with different lighting conditions and therefore sunlight and skies changing colours between consecutive shots. That is just a logistical reality to shooting a film. That is why it is more important to regrade films by watching said film in motion, rather than regrading from screencaps, that way you can see the bigger picture and get a much better idea of colours and especially the image dynamics in motion.

Like I said to DrDre, watch the actual release in motion rather than judging from single frames and perhaps your opinion may change. I am very happy with how this release looks in motion and I have no plans to change it in the near future. If you or DrDre want to discuss further with me how Raiders of the Lost Ark looks best, create your own releases and then we can compare how each of our releases looks in motion and have a very interesting discussion.

SkellingtonJack, I don’t want you to end up being disappointed unnecessarily, remember that the aim of this project is not to recreate the colour grading of previous home releases like the Laserdisc that has a very distinctive blanket reddish look but to the detriment of the blues, but to actually bring back the blues by removing all the blanket yellow tint on the blu-ray.

V1 was probably missing some warmth though, just removing all the blanket yellow tint wasn’t enough, so with V2 i’ve adjusted the settings to add that warmth back. The previous V2 screencaps were a little too saturated, I got carried away and when I came back after a 2 hour break and had a look at my settings I could see that i’d gone overboard. That’s why its important to take breaks when regrading and reaccess so you don’t go too far down the rabbit hole. Here are screencap comparisons using the final V2 settings:

Blu-ray:

Version 2 final settings:

Blu-ray:

Version 2 final settings:

Blu-ray:

Version 2 final settings:

Blu-ray:

Version 2 final settings:

Blu-ray:

Version 2 final settings:

Beber said:

Any plans on doing the same with the 2.35:1 2D Blu-ray?

If there is enough interest, sure. I’ll personally be watching the IMAX version of Titanic from now on though, I prefer the whole TV screen to be filled up with no black bars on the top or bottom, increases immersion for me.

supermancsm said:

Hi kk650,

I’m new to this site. Where Can I get the links to your awesome regrades

They’re available on Myspleen.

EDIT: V2 Screencaps removed because settings have been updated.

Thanks for all the feedback!

You all refering to warmer grading of the DVD and Laserdisc releases got me thinking, so I checked out the 3D blu-ray again and I think you’re right, Titanic is meant to be warmer and have more of that sunset feel to it in daylight shots. I have adjusted the grading settings accordingly and will be releasing a Version 2 of the Titanic IMAX release very soon.

EDIT: V2 Screencaps removed because settings have been updated.

DrDre said:

kk650 said:

That is definately better than the previous colour matching attempt but it is not indistuinguishable in terms of colour/image dynamics, the picture on the left looks fine but the picture on the right looks unnatural in terms of fleshtones, Indiana’s eyes in particular look very bad on the right and not at all like the picture on the left. The only thing worse than getting the fleshtones looking unnatural is having the eyes looking unnatural.

This is just nonsense. The RGB values for the flesh tones are identical, as such the flesh tones are identical. The only difference between the two images is the DNR applied to the bluray, which obviously has some effect on some of the image dynamics, which simply cannot be recovered by any methodology, least of all curves adjustment.

There’s no need to call my opinion nonsense DrDre. My eyes see what they see, regardless of whether you agree with them or not. I’ve been respectful to you and i’d appreciate the same courtesy.

We’re just going to have to agree to disagree. I’m not interested in discussing this with you any further until you create a release of Raiders of the Lost Ark using your own methodology. Then we can talk more, but not before.

That is definately better than the previous colour matching attempt but it is not indistuinguishable in terms of colour/image dynamics, the picture on the left looks fine but the picture on the right still looks unnatural in terms of fleshtones, Indiana’s eyes in particular look very bad on the right and not at all like the picture on the left. The only thing worse than getting the fleshtones looking unnatural is having the eyes looking unnatural.

I’ve always found what your colour matching tool can do very impressive but unless it can match the colours and image dynamics 100%, there is a margin of error of the algorithm making up colours/changing image dynamics that I personally would not be able to tolerate. If I were to create a release using that tool, I would never release it unless it was 100% accurate or the difference was so negligable that I could not tell the difference looking with my own eyes on my 30 inch monitor.

Nick66 said:

kk650 said:

Nick66 said:

I have KK650’s regrade, and it’s my “go to” version of Fellowship.

Still, it doesn’t really match the TE BD or EE DVD (and in fairness I know that’s not what he was trying to do) and in general just replaces the green tint with a blue one. It’s a definite improvment, but still not how the film should look (IMO).

Matching the Theatrical Edition blu-ray or Extended Edition DVD would unfortunately require a shot by shot regrade. I believe you’re right about there being a slight blue tint on the Fellowship of the Ring release I put up on Myspleen, I updated the regrade settings a number of months ago but I just hadn’t gotten round to encoding it yet. Thanks for reminding me! I should definately have the new regrade of Fellowship of the Ring done soon.

Oh I’d love to see that! Like I said, your FOTR is pretty much the version I watch now, so any upgrades would be most welcome.

I’ll also be updating The Two Towers and Return of the King as well, in case you’re interested in those.

I’m really looking forward to checking this out 😃

NeverarGreat, do you have any idea when this is going to appear on Myspleen? Have you put up any screencap comparisons for this release?

I believe that the blu-ray was color graded on a shot by shot basis and then a blanket yellow tint was added on top over the whole film. I have just removed the blanket yellow tint and left the shot by shot colour grading underneath intact. You may think that methodology is flawed but to my eyes that is not the case and I see a lot of flaws in your own methodology which I’ve pointed out earlier, the unnatural looking fleshtones in particular which is a very big problem, the biggest a release can have as far as i’m concerned.

Colour matches would perhaps only be worthwhile in my opinion if you had a 35mm frame of every single shot in the film to match to, and even then, trying to force the colours of the blu-ray to match the very different colours of the 35mm LPP gives very questionable results to my eyes, for it to work the colours and image dynamics have to be 100% identical. This shot below for example of the Bluray matched to the 35mm LPP, the fleshtones just look wrong to me, they don’t look right relative to the lighting of the scene and the overall colours. The 35mm LPP frame looks fine, but the Bluray matched to 35mm LPP does not IHMO, like you’re trying to force two completely different colour schemes and image dynamics together and ended up with a bit of a mishmash where the colours don’t interact correctly:

We both have our own methodologies that we prefer and that’s fine. I see numerous problems with yours, you see numerous problems with mine. I don’t think we’re going to be able to convince each other of the merits or problems of our own methodologies, the only way to proceed would be to compare two releases of the same film created using the two different methodologies. I would personally find that fascinating.

The main difference between you and me of course is that I have actually commited and put out a release of Raiders of the Lost Ark. You put out your release of Raiders of the Lost Ark using your colour matching methodology, then I’ll watch the whole film in full, as its meant to be seen. The only way of truely accessing a regrade is watching it, not nitpicking single screencaps. Then I’ll be happy to discuss with you the merits and flaws of each release and the respective methodologies used to create them. Until then, I don’t see there being much point discussing this further.

You should check out my release in motion and see whether that changes your mind about the colours. One thing i’ve learned from creating regrades is that screencaps very often don’t tell the whole story, you have to watch the actual release in motion.

Nick66 said:

I have KK650’s regrade, and it’s my “go to” version of Fellowship.

Still, it doesn’t really match the TE BD or EE DVD (and in fairness I know that’s not what he was trying to do) and in general just replaces the green tint with a blue one. It’s a definite improvment, but still not how the film should look (IMO).

Matching the Theatrical Edition blu-ray or Extended Edition DVD would unfortunately require a shot by shot regrade. I believe you’re right about there being a slight blue tint on the Fellowship of the Ring release I put up on Myspleen, I updated the regrade settings a number of months ago but I just hadn’t gotten round to encoding it yet. Thanks for reminding me! I should definately have the new regrade of Fellowship of the Ring done soon.

Nick66 said:

I see these releases more as an “alternative” colour grading rather than a “corrected” one. I’m a fan of KK650’s FOTR, for example, and it’s preferable to the BD, but like this release, more or less replaces one tint with another. In the case of FOTR, I prefer KK650’s to the official BD (though it still has issues), but I think I prefer the colouring on the Raiders BD to this one. Though obviously neither is completely accurate to how the film should look.

I think that’s the best way to look at any regraded release. The only ‘correct’ releases are the official blu-rays, all regrades based off those blu-rays are ‘alternative’ colour grading by definition in my book.

Many may prefer these ‘alternative’ colour graded releases, but the fact remains that none of them have been supervised by the filmmakers, while the official releases have been, so the official releases are the most ‘correct’ releases we’ll ever get, if we all agree that the artist should have the final say on how their piece of art should look and what is ‘correct’.

As for Fellowship of the Ring, i’ll be releasing a nice new updated version of that release very soon 😃

DrDre said:

kk650 said:

I removed all the blanket yellow tint and was left with the colours that you see in my regrade. I appreciate that you think I have removed too much yellow but I can very clearly see that that is not the case, I can see that with pretty much 100% certainty.

Well, in that case you shouldn’t trust your eyes, but the numbers. As the RGB values don’t lie. There’s an overabundance of magenta all over the frames you posted in places where it definitely shouldn’t be (as the above complation makes clear visually). This is a mathematical certainty.

This feels to me like a case of you shooting the messenger, blaming me for how the blu-ray transfer looks under the blanket yellow tint, which is completely out of my control. The Titanic looks much more conventional colourwise under the blanket yellow tint but I did exactly the same as I did here, just remove all of the blanket yellow tint.

And your Titanic looks great, no doubts there. However, if you simply look at the compilation I posted above, there’s no doubt your Raiders regrade is magenta shifted in the brighter areas. This has nothing to do with the bluray colors.

I don’t think there’s much point going round in circles here DrDre. You were working on your own version of Raiders of the Lost Ark right? That’ll be your opportunity to regrade the film to your preferences with a more yellow colour scheme and then everybody will be able to choose between both our releases. I’ve moved onto other projects now.

There’s no circles, it’s magenta. If that’s your purpose, more power to you. While I too have a tendency to respond with irritation in the face of criticism (initially, these things tend to bug me, such that I usually fix the problem eventually), I’ve also found these discussions generally lead to a better result, as sometimes others notice things, you may have missed. You’re free to ignore me of course. That’s fine by me, but left as is, this regrade is not up to your usual standards (IMO of course).

I am glad that you like the Titanic release but the fact that you like the look of that release and not this one is completely making my point about shooting the messenger.

You think there is too much blue and red after removing all the blanket yellow tint, fair enough. That does not change the fact that it is there after removing all the blanket yellow tint.

Maybe the print or digital negative they used to colour correct the blu-ray shot by shot had a little bit of red-fade (like all the 35mm print frames of Raiders of the Lost Ark i’ve seen out there) and that made them feel the need to add all the yellow to try to counterbalance that and give the film a more conventional orangey look? I don’t know but the purpose of this release in particular was to remove all the blanket yellow tint, not compromise like I have in previous releases and only remove it in part.

I welcome your feedback and that of everybody else but I never expect my releases to be liked by everyone, colour preference is completely subjective so that would be impossible and a fool’s errand. As releasers we have no choice but to go ahead accepting that fact. I think Kino in particular is becoming very familiar with this due to all the controversy surrounding their The Good, the Bad and the Ugly release, they tried to make a section of fans happy by removing some of the blanket yellow tint and ended up pissing off another section of fans.

The moral of the Kino story is that its impossible to make everybody happy, so the most important thing is to make sure you as the releaser are happy. That said, its important to always listen to feedback, just as it is important to understand that its not always necessary or even advisable to act on said feedback. In the case of this Raiders of the Lost Ark release, I am very happy with how it turned out, but i’d be lying if I said I didn’t expect resistance after seeing what the film looked like with all the blanket yellow tint removed.

I removed all the blanket yellow tint and was left with the colours that you see in my regrade. I appreciate that you think I have removed too much yellow but I can very clearly see that that is not the case, I can see that with pretty much 100% certainty. This feels to me like a case of you shooting the messenger, blaming me for how the blu-ray transfer looks under the blanket yellow tint, which is completely out of my control. The Titanic looks much more conventional colourwise under the blanket yellow tint but I did exactly the same as I did here, just remove all of the blanket yellow tint.

I don’t think there’s much point going round in circles here DrDre. You were working on your own version of Raiders of the Lost Ark right? That’ll be your opportunity to regrade the film to your preferences with a more yellow colour scheme and then everybody will be able to choose between both our releases. I’ve moved onto other projects now.

confusedgambler said:

I think DrDre has been consistently on the warm side of color grading where kk650 has mostly graded on the cool side. Not a big deal really, some people prefer the warm while others like the cool. Personally the warm colors on DrDre’s examples look more natural to me. kk650 you talk about your skins tones. To you does Marcus’s skin tone look correct? To me he looks so blue, sickly even.

Within the context of the rest of the colours and the lightsources in the scenes yes I think all the fleshtones of my release look correct. The ones in DrDre’s screencaps do not, they just look wrong to my eyes.

If I want to watch a warmer looking Raiders of the Lost Ark, I can just watch the official blu-ray, at least the fleshtones look correct there in the context of the rest of the colours.

I appreciate the feedback guys but I much prefer the colour and image dynamic of my own release compared to DrDre’s regraded screencaps here, the difference is night and day to me.

The biggest issue I have is that the fleshtone colours look very unnatural to me in all of DrDre’s screenshots, especially the screenshots where Indiana’s about to grab the idol and when he shoots the guy with the sword. Fleshtones are the most important thing in a regrade IMHO, those have to look right or you´ll end up taking people out of the film, because viewers spend most of the time watching the faces of the characters. Image dynamics are also an issue, they feel underexposed and there is still a blanket yellow tint that hasn’t been removed, making the sky look greenish blue. My release removes all the blanket yellow tint, bringing all the blues back into the colour palette of the film.

My previous releases were more conservative and I didn’t commit fully to removing the blanket yellow tint in its entirety, leaving some of the yellow blanket tint like DrDre did in his screencaps, but now I am able to be a lot more precise when it comes to removing all the blanket tint.

Thanks!

This is a regraded IMAX version of Titanic to mark the 20th Anniversary of this great film. I removed a strong blanket yellow tint that has been added to the whole film on the Titanic 3D blu-ray. The release is 22.8 GB and includes the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track from the blu-ray. I’ve put it up of Myspleen for those that are interested in checking it out. If there is interest, I can also put up the 46GB version of this release that I created to have as good image quality as possible.

Here are some screencap comparisons:

Blu-ray 1:

Regraded 1:

Blu-ray 2:

Regraded 2:

Blu-ray 3:

Regraded 3:

Blu-ray 4:

Regraded 4:

Blu-ray 5:

Regraded 5:

Blu-ray 6:

Regraded 6:

Blu-ray 7:

Regraded 7:

Blu-ray 8:

Regraded 8:

Blu-ray 9:

Regraded 9:

I’ve just uploaded a new regrade of Raiders of the Lost Ark to Myspleen. The release is 23.2 GB and includes the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track from the blu-ray as well as the 2 channel PCM audio track from the Laserdisc. Here are some screencap comparisons for those interested:

Blu-ray 1:

Regraded 1:

Blu-ray 2:

Regraded 2:

Blu-ray 3:

Regraded 3:

Blu-ray 4:

Regraded 4:

Blu-ray 5:

Regraded 5:

Blu-ray 6:

Regraded 6:

deleted

Nekozuki said:

Hello kk! I’m glad I found you after tehparadox has disappeared. Almost thought you disappeared too 😦. Will you release your new regrades here or is there any other site that you use?
Thank you for all the regrades so far!

The plan is to upload my new regraded catalog releases to Myspleen. I haven’t yet decided where to upload regrades of recent films, like the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 regrade I just finished. I’ll send you a PM letting you know when I do though.

All my other older regraded releases i’ll reupload as well when I get the chance. I’ve done a lot of releases though so it’ll take a while, I had more than 200 releases up on tehparadox before it went down. Luckily all of those releases are safe, backed up on external hard disks and blu-ray writables.

Papai2013 said:

The 3D grade looked too yellow, while yours look too blue to me. On a sunny day, a sky does not cast such blue shades. You should also check the white balance. It should be slightly warm. Just a suggestion from a student of cinematography.

Have you actually downloaded and seen the Titanic IMAX release in motion? Screencaps can be misleading and look colder and more contrasty when viewed in a size smaller than their original size on a monitor, you get a better idea of their actual saturation and contrast when viewing them at full size and even better when viewing the film in motion.

I can see that the blanket yellow tint on the Titanic 3D blu-ray has been fully removed and the colours are balanced beneath that blanket tint. What I mean by the colours being balanced is that there isn’t a blanket tint on the regrade. If I go any further and remove more yellow, then I would start adding a blanket blue tint.

I have had one or two releases where the release felt cold after removing all the blanket yellow tint, even though the colours were balanced, so I had to create another release where I added back part of the blanket yellow tint to counter that feeling. This was especially the case with the Magnificent Seven (2016) regrade I did, I had to create two releases and the warmer one was my prefered one but there were quite a few people that prefered the more balanced colder release as well, they said that to their eyes it had more ‘pop’. I personally don’t feel that is the case here with this Titanic IMAX regrade when watching it in motion.

If you get the chance, check out this release on Myspleen, its currently freeleech there so it won’t affect your ratio, seeing it in motion may change your mind.

Papai2013 said:

In my honest opinion, the blue tint looks unnatural. Something in-between the Blu-ray grading and your version might look better.

All i’ve done is remove the blanket yellow tint that was there on the Titanic 3D blu-ray and boost exposure slightly.

I don’t think its my place to subjectively decide that I would prefer the film to look warmer and reintroduce some of the blanket yellow tint.

I personally think it looks great and is a big improvement over the blu-ray, whether people like the colours found underneath the blanket yellow tint though is entirely subjective of course, my releases just offer the option to watch these classic films without feeling like you’re wearing yellow sunglasses.

NeverarGreat said:

kk650 said:

Congrats on finally finishing this NeverarGreat! Very interested in seeing what colour choices you’ve made in certain scenes.

Do you have any plans to work on The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi?

Looking at the whole thing put together after years of working on it piecemeal, I see nothing but problems and ‘almost there’ shots. I finally start to see what the film should look like, which makes any shot that doesn’t quite make it look terribly unfortunate in comparison. But the time comes when you have to abandon the work and release it.

After this is released, I’m planning on taking a long break from color correction. Hopefully there will be a good official release of the trilogy in the meantime (or another great fan project), but if that doesn’t happen then who knows, I may be back at it someday. 😉

I’m familiar with that feeling. Reminds me of that famous Leonardo da Vinci quote ‘Art is never finished, only abandoned.’

You definately deserve a big break, honestly I could never focus on a single release for such a long period of time like you have and to an even greater extent Adywan has done, I’d go nuts.

I was suffering from Star Wars fatigue myself a few months back when I put together my latest Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back Semi-Specialised releases, I needed a break and didn’t get round to doing Return of the Jedi. I’m planning to get that finished in the next few months just before The Last Jedi comes out.

That’s the one thing I dislike about working on my favourite films, it wears them out for me when I’m constantly jumping back and forth between scenes out of sequence to check how the colours look, trying to make sure the colours look good across the whole film. It can take a number of months to regain all my enthusiasm for the film again after i’ve finished working on it.