Color Correcting the Dragon Box - 3 Part Spectacular

[JohnnyCashKami]

So is there a definitive way to do this yet? I got lost in the discussions of specific color choices. The original post no longer has its pictures available so the guide seems a bit difficult to follow. I would like to do this, but in the most streamlined way possible.

Can someone post a new guide or at least point me in the right direction with this? Also, is there like a set of codes that someone has already compiled to run with the programs so I can just plug them in and hit go?

From what I've read here and there, the colors vary from episode to episode if you want to be as accurate as possible and it helps that you know how the Original Broadcast Episodes looked like so that you can recreate it. Those who're into this sort of stuff generally use VirtualDub but there's probably other programs you can use.

It's an extensive and exhausting process so that may even tire you from doing it. Personally, the colors that FUNimation uses on their releases are way better than the Dragon Box ones but FUNi's remastering leaves a lot to desire which ruins it.

[Robo4900]

So is there a definitive way to do this yet? I got lost in the discussions of specific color choices. The original post no longer has its pictures available so the guide seems a bit difficult to follow. I would like to do this, but in the most streamlined way possible.

Can someone post a new guide or at least point me in the right direction with this? Also, is there like a set of codes that someone has already compiled to run with the programs so I can just plug them in and hit go?

You're never going to get accurate colouring, everyone does things differently, and there's no such thing as a best way to do it, just several wrong ways to do it.

Best to just explore what and how looks good to you, and work on doing that.

Generally, most will agree the basic workflow is to first adjust the white balance(The R/G/B values) so white is actually white and such, then every other aspect of it is entirely up to what you're trying to do, how you're trying to do it, etc.

[TheNeverhood]

Hey,

I''ll be correcting my Dragon Box with Photoshop and FFmpeg, and I'm gonna keep things simple by only removing the colour cast. I think anything more adds too much subjectivity for me. However, there's still a few different ways to remove the colour cast, and I would appreciate your thoughts on the following screenshots:

DragonBox
https://imgur.com/a/QI0MrVD

Auto (Find Dark & Light Colors) 0% clipped
https://imgur.com/a/ZiLHYj5

Auto (Find Dark & Light Colors) 0.5% clipped
https://imgur.com/Y5zfZMY

Eyes set as whitepoint
https://imgur.com/a/8ukEtWM

Bluray (just as another reference)
https://imgur.com/a/7sCFINF

I think the Dragon Box looks a bit washed out. I don't think the blacks are black enough or the whites are white enough, but there's some subjectivity here and that's where things get a bit muddy.

[Shaddy]

I have no authority at all here but I think the 0.5% looks the best.

[HakkaiBills93]

Hey,

I''ll be correcting my Dragon Box with Photoshop and FFmpeg, and I'm gonna keep things simple by only removing the colour cast. I think anything more adds too much subjectivity for me. However, there's still a few different ways to remove the colour cast, and I would appreciate your thoughts on the following screenshots:

DragonBox
https://imgur.com/a/QI0MrVD

Auto (Find Dark & Light Colors) 0% clipped
https://imgur.com/a/ZiLHYj5

Auto (Find Dark & Light Colors) 0.5% clipped
https://imgur.com/Y5zfZMY

Eyes set as whitepoint
https://imgur.com/a/8ukEtWM

Bluray (just as another reference)
https://imgur.com/a/7sCFINF

I think the Dragon Box looks a bit washed out. I don't think the blacks are black enough or the whites are white enough, but there's some subjectivity here and that's where things get a bit muddy.

it's hard to judge with one screenshot, all i can say is the one using eyes is overbrighten, you'll fuck off all bright details , have you some shots from goku vs vegeta, goku vs radditz etc ? you should try color correcting without affecting brightness luminosity and correct them as needed by another way, else you'll destroy dark or bright details

[TheNeverhood]

Hey,

I''ll be correcting my Dragon Box with Photoshop and FFmpeg, and I'm gonna keep things simple by only removing the colour cast. I think anything more adds too much subjectivity for me. However, there's still a few different ways to remove the colour cast, and I would appreciate your thoughts on the following screenshots:

DragonBox
https://imgur.com/a/QI0MrVD

Auto (Find Dark & Light Colors) 0% clipped
https://imgur.com/a/ZiLHYj5

Auto (Find Dark & Light Colors) 0.5% clipped
https://imgur.com/Y5zfZMY

Eyes set as whitepoint
https://imgur.com/a/8ukEtWM

Bluray (just as another reference)
https://imgur.com/a/7sCFINF

I think the Dragon Box looks a bit washed out. I don't think the blacks are black enough or the whites are white enough, but there's some subjectivity here and that's where things get a bit muddy.

it's hard to judge with one screenshot, all i can say is the one using eyes is overbrighten, you'll fuck off all bright details , have you some shots from goku vs vegeta, goku vs radditz etc ? you should try color correcting without affecting brightness luminosity and correct them as needed by another way, else you'll destroy dark or bright details

Yes, using the eyes as a whitepoint is way too much, but I think Auto with some clipping is not too bad. FFmpeg can only work with the curves filter, so I'm a bit limited here. It's possible to clip the whites and blacks separately (like 0% for blacks and 1% for whites).

Here's a few screenshots of Vegeta from the Goku vs Vegeta episode:

DragonBox


Auto (Find Dark & Light Colors) 0% clipped


Auto (Find Dark & White Colors) 0.5% clipped


Auto (Find Dark & White Colors) 1% clipped


Bluray

[JohnnyCashKami]

0.5 version seems to be the best of the bunch. FUNi's Season Blu-rays quality looks like a job done by a certain Greek fansub but even they wouldn't butcher it so much.

[TheNeverhood]

0.5 version seems to be the best of the bunch. FUNi's Season Blu-rays quality looks like a job done by a certain Greek fansub but even they wouldn't butcher it so much.

Thanks for the feedback. Are there any good references for whites and blacks? The episodes vary and many of them from Vol 7 are already fairly bright, certainly brighter than the episodes from Vol 1, so I can't really use the same settings for every episode. However, if I can find a good reference for how bright the eyes should be, or how dark Goku's hair should be etc, then I can match every episode.

Here's a few screenshots of Mr. Satan from episode 261 (Gotenks is Awesome).

DragonBox


Auto (Find Dark & Light Colors) 0% clipped


Auto (Find Dark & Light Colors) 0.5% clipped


Eyes set as white point


Bluray


Here using the eyes as a white point is not much brighter than Auto 0.5. I still wouldn't use the eyes as a white point, but you can see the problem with using Auto 0.5% clip for every episode.

[JohnnyCashKami]

I'm honestly no expert on video technicalities but know a good one when I see. So, sorry, bud.

Say, wouldn't it be better to use Kai TFC as your Blu-ray source fir comparison than FUNimation's shitty Season Blu-rays? I dunno which episode that Mr. Satan appears on otherwise I'd provide a lossless screenshot.

[TheNeverhood]

I'm honestly no expert on video technicalities but know a good one when I see. So, sorry, bud.

Say, wouldn't it be better to use Kai TFC as your Blu-ray source fir comparison than FUNimation's shitty Season Blu-rays? I dunno which episode that Mr. Satan appears on otherwise I'd provide a lossless screenshot.

I only have access to the Dragon Box and Blurays. I bought the Blurays for the audio tracks (I'll be syncing them up with the Dragon Box). It's the only thing it has over the Dragon Box, that is, better sound quality. It's also nice to have the US Broadcast tracks for the sake of completion.

But thanks, I'll take a look at Kai TFC.

[HakkaiBills93]

I'm honestly no expert on video technicalities but know a good one when I see. So, sorry, bud.

Say, wouldn't it be better to use Kai TFC as your Blu-ray source fir comparison than FUNimation's shitty Season Blu-rays? I dunno which episode that Mr. Satan appears on otherwise I'd provide a lossless screenshot.

kai tfc don't have right colors so not worth using innacurate colors to cc, you only have to rely on cels scan but only those that have been scanned properly calibrate .
about his cc it's like i suspected he just removed the color cast but sadly it's not the only need in matter of cc, you have to correct colors too Mr satan skin tone in the bluray is for example good but not on your cc

[HakkaiBills93]

I'm honestly no expert on video technicalities but know a good one when I see. So, sorry, bud.

Say, wouldn't it be better to use Kai TFC as your Blu-ray source fir comparison than FUNimation's shitty Season Blu-rays? I dunno which episode that Mr. Satan appears on otherwise I'd provide a lossless screenshot.

kai tfc don't have right colors so not worth using innacurate colors to cc, you only have to rely on cels scan but only those that have been scanned properly calibrate .
about his cc it's like i suspected he just removed the color cast but sadly it's not the only need in matter of cc, you have to correct colors too Mr satan skin tone in the bluray is for example good but not on your cc

as you can see above season are closer than dbox and your cc

[TheNeverhood]

I'm honestly no expert on video technicalities but know a good one when I see. So, sorry, bud.

Say, wouldn't it be better to use Kai TFC as your Blu-ray source fir comparison than FUNimation's shitty Season Blu-rays? I dunno which episode that Mr. Satan appears on otherwise I'd provide a lossless screenshot.

kai tfc don't have right colors so not worth using innacurate colors to cc, you only have to rely on cels scan but only those that have been scanned properly calibrate .
about his cc it's like i suspected he just removed the color cast but sadly it's not the only need in matter of cc, you have to correct colors too Mr satan skin tone in the bluray is for example good but not on your cc

Yes, I only removed the colour cast, as I said in my earlier post. I think almost everyone agrees on removing the colour cast, but when you start changing colours etc, that's when things get a bit subjective. I'm still on the fence about changing the black and white levels.

[HakkaiBills93]

I'm honestly no expert on video technicalities but know a good one when I see. So, sorry, bud.

Say, wouldn't it be better to use Kai TFC as your Blu-ray source fir comparison than FUNimation's shitty Season Blu-rays? I dunno which episode that Mr. Satan appears on otherwise I'd provide a lossless screenshot.

kai tfc don't have right colors so not worth using innacurate colors to cc, you only have to rely on cels scan but only those that have been scanned properly calibrate .
about his cc it's like i suspected he just removed the color cast but sadly it's not the only need in matter of cc, you have to correct colors too Mr satan skin tone in the bluray is for example good but not on your cc

Yes, I only removed the colour cast, as I said in my earlier post. I think almost everyone agrees on removing the colour cast, but when you start changing colours etc, that's when things get a bit subjective. I'm still on the fence about changing the black and white levels.

white and black balance is only part of the job , color correcting is the whole process, the game is to match how it was looking originally (else it's color alteration not color correction) but there is lot of things to keep in mind
- film have so much degrade and each part was stored differrently so you need to color correct each part separately
- in one part of the episode, you can have 0, 1 or some part were colors degrade differrently so sometimes you have to isolate those part
- all flashback need separate color corrections as they are from others episodes having differrent color cast, recaps sometimes need it too
- you have no true and 100% accurate references to match as even cels degrade, what was shot on film already have slight colors alterations, you have plenty of cels but they degrade too so you need thoses that are from episodes and in good conditions and also, you need to be aware that on film colors, luma etc are not exactly the same, you can have a really nice and very details cels

If only there was one release not degraded to see how each episode would look exactly it could have help a lot, some people on the web swear they have accurate colors in theirs color correction but there is no evidence that episodes should look like that, maybe some colors are little too off etc...

[crabshank1]

Hi. I have read each and every one of the answers to this topic. It is very interesting what you are trying to achieve, correct the color of the episodes. I'm trying to do something similar, match or at least make it look like the color of the Dragon Box to the Bluray edition of funimation.

Searching the network for the original tone of the episodes, I found the streaming service of Hikari TV.

On this website there is a thumbnail of the episodes "remastered" or redrawn.

I leave several examples:





I leave more thumbnails, they exist from 36 to 291.





Do you think those colors are the right ones?

Some rudimentary colour matching (based on the drawn) for the first one

http://www.framecompare.com/screenshotc ... n/1CBJNNNU

Original:


Matched:

[crabshank1]

Some rudimentary colour matching (based on the drawn) for the first one

http://www.framecompare.com/screenshotc ... n/1CBJNNNU

Original:


Matched:

Better (HSV adjustments):

[lansing]

So last month I came across a dragon ball facebook group and saw someone posted some small resolution images of a few character color palettes from dragon ball. After some searching I was able to find the full set on an image hosting website. Turns out those color palette were from the Dragon Ball OVA back in 2011.



The color was definitely off comparing to the OVA dvd, probably due to compression. After some comparing it to the ova dvd, I can confirm that a single color palette of a character model covers both normal and dark scene throughout the OVA. This is a huge finding because I used to think that the character color palette would be completely different for normal and dark scenes and they may change from scene to scene, which makes collecting color sample from cel a very long shot because I don't know how many do I need.

But now, from what I saw, I can assume that the character color palette won't be changing throughout the series, that means in theory, I would only have to collect two cel of a character, one under normal scene and one under dark scene, to obtain his entire color palette for color matching.

So the color matching project is actually very doable now, get two cels for each character and scan or take picture of them under calibrated condition. Keep building the database and eventually everything will fall into place.

I may start hunting cheap cel next month. Right now is to redesign my database scheme according this these images.

[HakkaiBills93]

So last month I came across a dragon ball facebook group and saw someone posted some small resolution images of a few character color palettes from dragon ball. After some searching I was able to find the full set on an image hosting website. Turns out those color palette were from the Dragon Ball OVA back in 2011.



The color was definitely off comparing to the OVA dvd, probably due to compression. After some comparing it to the ova dvd, I can confirm that a single color palette of a character model covers both normal and dark scene throughout the OVA. This is a huge finding because I used to think that the character color palette would be completely different for normal and dark scenes and they may change from scene to scene, which makes collecting color sample from cel a very long shot because I don't know how many do I need.

But now, from what I saw, I can assume that the character color palette won't be changing throughout the series, that means in theory, I would only have to collect two cel of a character, one under normal scene and one under dark scene, to obtain his entire color palette for color matching.

So the color matching project is actually very doable now, get two cels for each character and scan or take picture of them under calibrated condition. Keep building the database and eventually everything will fall into place.

I may start hunting cheap cel next month. Right now is to redesign my database scheme according this these images.

you can help you with thoses
http://lineup.toei-anim.co.jp/ja/tv/dragon/story/
http://lineup.toei-anim.co.jp/ja/tv/dragonz/story/ (look for each link you can see episodes thumbnails (some are screenshots but lot are cels)
it can help you

[lansing]

you can help you with thoses
http://lineup.toei-anim.co.jp/ja/tv/dragon/story/
http://lineup.toei-anim.co.jp/ja/tv/dragonz/story/ (look for each link you can see episodes thumbnails (some are screenshots but lot are cels)
it can help you

These are not cel

[JohnnyCashKami]

Just for the fun of it, I tried to fix the colors on TV SP2 which looked a bit too green and here's the result.

Original

Spoiler:

CC'd

Spoiler:

Did this via my Samsung tablet with LightX. Looks better to me without that green tint or whatever it is.

Green tint might be TOEI's "DRM" which everyone despise but accept regardless.