Sailor Moon Color Correction

[tuxmask]

Love your upscaling to HD...and what you can do is impressive. Yet...I like it without the color correction myself. The show played around very much with lighting, and mood...and it generally seemed to be golden hour/twilight for long periods of time. The daylight (and moonlight) was another star of the show...especially in the early seasons. I like the warmth and feeling of the original colors, which make up the iconic sailor moon palette of golden warm tones, lavender, and more.

The problem is it's not the original colors. The uncorrected purple and yellow tints you see in the show are produced by film aging.

 

[tuxmask]

What is this tendency to want to erase the grain? Everything is smooth, and all the details are gone...

My project will not involve upscaling, and grain will be retained.

 

[tuxmask]

I was playing around with color correcting sailor stars and I found that the dvd or blu-ray version impossible to correct. The saturated color has all been crushed to black and cannot be restored.

This is a color comparison on the first episdoe between a denoised dvd version and a cel color version I quick painted in photoshop. Notice the blue on the uniform, in the dvd version, it has been darkened so much that it became black. There is nothing can be done.

sailor stars dvd vs cel color - Imgsli

Does anyone has the laser disc version to see if it has better brightness?

The laserdisc is less compressed: unknown | Slowpoke Pics
Even so, my understanding is that without access to a raw scan it's not possible to match cel colors without creating artifacts. I plan to include shots from a domesday duplication of the laserdisc due to the compression and frame blending of the dvd master.

 

[Star Angel Haruki]

How hard is the color correction process?

 

[sapphire91]

How hard is the color correction process?

It depends on the episode, sometimes even the scene...

 

[Star Angel Haruki]

It depends on the episode, sometimes even the scene...

Interesting because I always assumed it was something different but I wasn't sure how they were doing it or the software they were using. I do remember a long time ago someone posted something about color correction or masters and they mentioned some things about waiting hours for something to complete and it when I saw the topic recently it made me wonder....How hard is that stuff??

 

[sapphire91]

Interesting because I always assumed it was something different but I wasn't sure how they were doing it or the software they were using. I do remember a long time ago someone posted something about color correction or masters and they mentioned some things about waiting hours for something to complete and it when I saw the topic recently it made me wonder....How hard is that stuff??

The upscaling process is very slow, as for color correction specifically it depends on how stable the episode is and how in depth you are going with it - some episodes are very very nasty... Even if you do the absolute minimum which is white balance - you will need to make multiple cuts and treat scenes differently as there are different grades of bad with the colors from scene to scene on top of the overall episode degradation.

 

[lansing]

The laserdisc is less compressed: unknown | Slowpoke Pics
Even so, my understanding is that without access to a raw scan it's not possible to match cel colors without creating artifacts. I plan to include shots from a domesday duplication of the laserdisc due to the compression and frame blending of the dvd master.

The laserdisc brightness looks pretty good, the DVD version looks like crap. How about the Sailor Stars episode? Are they consistant like this one?

 

[tuxmask]

The laserdisc brightness looks pretty good, the DVD version looks like crap. How about the Sailor Stars episode? Are they consistant like this one?

I haven't looked yet, but most likely yes. Due to the MPEG-2 codec, DVDs have a more limited luma range than laserdisc. The two formats have different video masters, so they can't be merged; scenes from one or the other will be chosen.

 

[tuxmask]

The upscaling process is very slow, as for color correction specifically it depends on how stable the episode is and how in depth you are going with it - some episodes are very very nasty... Even if you do the absolute minimum which is white balance - you will need to make multiple cuts and treat scenes differently as there are different grades of bad with the colors from scene to scene on top of the overall episode degradation.

In most cases, due to misuse leading to poor frame continuity, upscaling is a waste of time.

 

[tuxmask]

How hard is the color correction process?

It's a tedious and multistep process. The first part is white balancing, which is just point and click. If you want to help, please let me know. It's very easy to do, just a lot of it.

 

[lansing]

It's a tedious and multistep process. The first part is white balancing, which is just point and click. If you want to help, please let me know. It's very easy to do, just a lot of it.

Honestly you'll need to show a better plan to get people to join your ship. Your white balancing samples are not convincing anybody. The differences are hardly even noticeable. And what is your color reference after the white balancing step? Cards? Cels? Magazines? How many do you have?

 

[Lady Pen]

How can anyone make colour corrections without the real clean film prints? All I can see about these projects is 'what I'd like the Sailor Moon series look like according to my personal preferences'.

 

[tuxmask]

Honestly you'll need to show a better plan to get people to join your ship. Your white balancing samples are not convincing anybody. The differences are hardly even noticeable. And what is your color reference after the white balancing step? Cards? Cels? Magazines? How many do you have?

After white balancing is complete there will be hue/mid shifts, curves correction, and skin fixes. I don't have examples of those steps to show yet because the white balancing phase isn't complete, that has to happen first. 36 episodes have been white balanced so far. Broadcast caps, ketteiban artbooks, nakayoshi magazines, color sheets, and cels will all be used as color references. For broadcast captures, certain episodes of the American broadcast are available on the Internet Archive, in addition to one Japanese airing. For cels I compiled scans I found online including Toei promotional cel scans, the total is 179. The color sheets were made available by Settei Dreams. I found magazine and artbook scans done by Miss Dream.

 

[ChibiBoi]

How can anyone make colour corrections without the real clean film prints? All I can see about these projects is 'what I'd like the Sailor Moon series look like according to my personal preferences'.

I've read from several posts that people have been going off the colors of the cels, as well as the colors of remastered movies. But we have a general idea of what it's supposed to look like anyway. Film takes a lot of color correcting even after scanning, so color correcting without the original film is not an issue.

I guess when the promo stills colours look very similar to the DVD, we assume that was the colours they were going for, especially when the blue looks nothing like what was used in the colour sheet.

http://imgur.com/8fJSDTZ

The color sheet is also itself a scan, and needs to be color corrected to represent what the color was physically on the paper. Like for example, if you just do a flat scan of an image on a flatbed scanner, you'd have to go back in and adjust the contrast, etc. to make it accurate to what you see in life.

 

[KingPriceman]

After white balancing is complete there will be hue/mid shifts, curves correction, and skin fixes. I don't have examples of those steps to show yet because the white balancing phase isn't complete, that has to happen first. [...] The color sheets were made available by Settei Dreams.

Those color sheets contain STAC color codes (I saw that someone had painstakingly put together a spreadsheet detailing which colors they were, though they were working off of dragon ball references for compiling it, Dragon Ball's production had to use the same STAC color codes from what I can assume) could those STAC colors help out in color correction at all?

 

[tuxmask]

I've read from several posts that people have been going off the colors of the cels, as well as the colors of remastered movies. But we have a general idea of what it's supposed to look like anyway. Film takes a lot of color correcting even after scanning, so color correcting without the original film is not an issue.

The color sheet is also itself a scan, and needs to be color corrected to represent what the color was physically on the paper. Like for example, if you just do a flat scan of an image on a flatbed scanner, you'd have to go back in and adjust the contrast, etc. to make it accurate to what you see in life.

Those color sheets contain STAC color codes (I saw that someone had painstakingly put together a spreadsheet detailing which colors they were, though they were working off of dragon ball references for compiling it, Dragon Ball's production had to use the same STAC color codes from what I can assume) could those STAC colors help out in color correction at all?

When I'm talking about a color sheet, which has a character design labeled with color codes, any color correction is unnecessary as there is no color present. Those color codes correspond to a color chart, which has sections of different colors and was used as reference for painting cels. A scan of that requires color calibration, as you said. The STAC colors will help; they have yet to be used because white balancing is not complete.
The color sheets and the color chart will be used in tandem in addition to other references (cels, etc). I apologize for the confusion, I should have been more specific.
One reference on its own, such as a broadcast capture or a promotional cel scan, is not enough for color correction reference. The references I mentioned earlier should all be taken into account when adjusting color after white balancing.

http://imgur.com/mZgggPO

 

[lansing]

After white balancing is complete there will be hue/mid shifts, curves correction, and skin fixes. I don't have examples of those steps to show yet because the white balancing phase isn't complete, that has to happen first. 36 episodes have been white balanced so far.

I don't think that's how this work. It would be fine if you're working by yourself, but if you want to recruit people to work with you, you'll need to show some results first. Nobody want to spend hundreds of hours not knowing what's going on or some mediocre results.

 

[tuxmask]

I don't think that's how this work. It would be fine if you're working by yourself, but if you want to recruit people to work with you, you'll need to show some results first. Nobody want to spend hundreds of hours not knowing what's going on or some mediocre results.

I understand your skepticism. As you said, there's no way of knowing if what I'm doing is worthwhile if I don't have any results to show. I'm almost done with white balancing the first arc. Once I am, I'll start doing mid shifts and post some examples of the remaining steps of the process afterward.

 

[lansing]

Those color sheets contain STAC color codes (I saw that someone had painstakingly put together a spreadsheet detailing which colors they were, though they were working off of dragon ball references for compiling it, Dragon Ball's production had to use the same STAC color codes from what I can assume) could those STAC colors help out in color correction at all?

That would be me.

Yes the Sailor Moon tv series all uses STAC so they will work. The challenge though is the lack of model color sheets unlike Dragon Ball. It's not until recently that we first saw the color sheets for all the senshi, meanwhile I have recreated 30+ for Dragon Ball.