Color Correcting the Dragon Box - 3 Part Spectacular

[Ashura]

Plus the promos and trailers didn't all go through the same remastering process (I think the GT Special was crap if I remember correctly). This is why I'm asking for animation cels.

Maybe the Promo's didn't need to go through the same remastering process as everything else because they were just fine from the start just my 2 cents.

My guess is that most of the promos are on video while the films were on, well, film. Thus why the colors on the promos hold up better.

If you guys are looking for reference, you can either use the Dragon Book that came with the Dragon Box, or you can look at some of the anime guides. I can't recall the titles for them, but Kei had given me a list a while back and might share with everyone else.

While these are cels converted to CYMK, they're pretty helpful anyway... since it's one of the few references there are.

I currently don't have a lot of time to keep up with this thread, but I'm glad you guys are experimenting and improving the process.

[Cold Skin]

It's really weird for me to see how yellowish some released footage can be.
When we see Ashura's work, we can wonder why a professional company didn't apply that kind of color correction...

I know that authenticity matters, but it would be like releasing photographs that have gone yellow through time.
Yes, that's how time naturally has a hold on things and it's authentic, but no, it doesn't feel like the way it was intended to be seen when created and it's not the authentic original vision of the staff...
I know I wouldn't dare officially releasing something that has deformed colors without having even just a simple process used to remove some of the damages caused by time on the material.

Or maybe I'm wrong and the original footage was yellowish like that to start with, but that seems unlikely.
The fact that Kai showed footage that seemed to have totally normal, non-yellow colors even on the many non-redrawn scenes seems to indicate that it's not very complicated to restore the right colors for professionals.

[superrayman3]

It's really weird for me to see how yellowish some released footage can be.
When we see Ashura's work, we can wonder why a professional company didn't apply that kind of color correction...

Maybe Toei just doesn't care what happens to the film as long as they can still use it.

I know that authenticity matters, but it would be like releasing photographs that have gone yellow through time.

And this is a good point.

Yes, that's how time naturally has a hold on things and it's authentic, but no, it doesn't feel like the way it was intended to be seen when created and it's not the authentic original vision of the staff...

That's another good point, just because something is authentic doesn't always mean that it holds the original artistic vision of the original source properly, and in the case of the DBOX footage (with the supposed exception of the trailers and promos) while the film used is authentic the color information on said film do not represent what the original artists wanted to see.

I know I wouldn't dare officially releasing something that has deformed colors without having even just a simple process used to remove some of the damages caused by time on the material.

I wouldn't release something a product that doesn't do the original justice either but some people have a different way of going about doing releases.

Or maybe I'm wrong and the original footage was yellowish like that to start with, but that seems unlikely.

The chances of that being the case are slim to none considering all the evidence showing otherwise.

The fact that Kai showed footage that seemed to have totally normal, non-yellow colors even on the many non-redrawn scenes seems to indicate that it's not very complicated to restore the right colors for professionals.

For complete novices it would be hard as hell to do a proper color correction but for professionals like Toei had your right it's shouldn't be all that complicated.

[ect5150]

More progress! This time I've altered more colors and overcome a semi-major hurdle. I don't want to declare absolute victory, but I might have a really good solution for getting rid of the artifacts all together.

Basically, the most noticeable artifacting comes from altering the hue too much. Sometimes it appears to be needed, but the problem is you'll have some cut-off. The boundary between which-color-was-altered and which-color-hasn't becomes visibly noticeable. Take the green sky far example in either movie 6 or the Goku vs. Vegeta fight. Push the green sky to blue and you get green-blue boundaries, like the following:

Click to enlarge:


or



In the shot we have a similar cel animation from, if you try to include the yellow-ish part of the sky in the hue change, you change all yellows (and it's not the yellow we really need to change, just the boundary). The solution is easy enough. I just manually create a gradient (several lines of code, each altering the hue by less and less across the color ranges needed until the artificial color border is visibly gone). I may have touched Goku's yellow a bit... so it needs just a bit of tweaking before I post any code for individuals.

There results are as follows:



and



So far, I see zero artifacts in any scene and the colors appear closer to what the fans/we think the colors should be based on past releases.

I'd like to post some other screen shots from this movie and get more eyes on it and if we can get anyone to post comparison screens from other DVD releases, I'd be grateful just to see if we need to alter the color a bit more or less. Look for the extra screenshots later on and I want to try this same technique on the Goku v Vegeta fight green sky and see if I can solve the problems mentioned a few pages ago.

If I can, I'll upload a small clip to YouTube later tonight so everyone can see what I mean about the artifacting in motion (it's tough to see sometimes the real effect from still shots)

[ect5150]

Here is the video comparison I mentioned.

http://www.mediafire.com/REMOVEdownload ... 3u32n7kahi

You'll need to get rid of the work REMOVE for it to work though. Every time I put up a comparison clip, it gets taken down. The only place I've ever posted links are in this forum, so it's either a bot or someone actively doing it - which I can't really stand since there are entire YouTube channels that post entire episodes uncut and I'm just posting a small semi-educational video for the fans --- whatever!

The bottom portion of the clip is completely unedited. The top has gone through the color cast removal (which was actually minimal on this movie. There wasn't much extra color overall. But then I've altered the green Cooler and Green skys to a much heavier blue using my altered technique to minimize the artifacting the first part of the guide would generate.

Anyone have some FUNI dvd screens of some of the same scenes?

EDIT:

Here is a quick screen grab (click to enlarge).


I based the colors on what I remember from the old fansub days and some FUNI clips on YouTube, even though the quality was horrible.

[AnimeMaakuo]

.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

... (New) Namek's sky is green, why did you make it blue, like the Earth's?

[ect5150]

... (New) Namek's sky is green, why did you make it blue, like the Earth's?

Because it's that way in the FUNI release:


Click to enlarge the crappy YouTube clip.

As pointed out in the animation cel, Cooler's metal color and the sky are primarily in the same hue range. To change one is to the change the other. The sky (unaltered) appears as various shades of green through the film... some lighter and some darker. But to change Cooler to the blueish metal that many people remember is to alter the sky as well. I don't have my old fan sub handy to show, but this is why I asked for screen shots of other sources.

[eledoremassis02]

here some big green screen shots

[Metalwario64]

Anyone have some FUNI dvd screens of some of the same scenes?

Sure thing:

Single DVD:


Double Feature:


DBox/Correction:



Single DVD:


Double Feature:


DBox/Correction:



Single DVD:


Double Feature:


DBox/Correction:



Single DVD:


Double Feature:


DBox/Correction:



Single DVD:


Double Feature:


DBox/Correction:



Single DVD:


Double Feature:


DBox/Correction:



Single DVD:


Double Feature:


DBox/Correction:

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Your corrections are a little more blue than the Double Feature DVDs, which had are the most blue, and way more blue than the FUNimation single DVDs. I think you should aim more for the single DVD footage, which is pretty close to the cels' sky color, only slightly more blue.

[ect5150]

Your corrections are a little more blue than the Double Feature DVDs, which had are the most blue, and way more blue than the FUNimation single DVDs. I think you should aim more for the single DVD footage, which is pretty close to the cels' sky color, only slightly more blue.

Thanks for the screens. Compared to the double features, my hue value was only off by 4 (out of 360, so it wasn't bad for just eyeballing it... I"m also of the opinion a difference of 4 in the hue isn't really noticeable at 30 frames per second). I did a quick conversion for one screen shot and adjusted the hues to match (I'm using Cooler's forehead as the matching area... both version below have the same hue in the forehead). I know I need to work on the clouds a bit, but I was waiting for some screens to verify. The color of the coulds being off is more a function of the rate of which my gradient smooths the hue changes. I'll just need to increase/decrease the rate of the change to fix that.




That screen have the same hue as the screen you posted from the double feature. The remaining differences are brightness, saturation and contrast... which I prefer not to mess with.

It's funny how FUNI's singles are green-ish, but the double features are blue-ish.

[Metalwario64]

Thing is, the Double Features are noticeably more blue than the cels, so they aren't a good frame of reference, unless you're just using it as an example of your gradient technique.

Here's another cel from Amazon:


Here's the single DVD shot:


Here's the Double Feature shot:


And here's the cel with boosted contrast and saturation to match FUNimation's footage:


The sky is a bit greener than the FUNi single DVD, which is also a bit greener (usually more, but in this case just a bit) than the Double Feature footage. It's especially worth mentioning that the blue in the Double Features is definitely through FUNimation's (or Texas Post & Transfer if they did this one) tampering.

They simply upped the blue RGB levels which makes everything look more blue. Light browns and yellows now look washed out, sometimes even skin looks bluish, and noticeable in this comparison is that the purple robots in the backgrounds, which are purple in both the cels and the single DVD footage, are blue in the Double Feature footage.

[ect5150]

Here's another cel from Amazon:

That's an excellent quality shot. Plus it's a nice midpoint between all of the colors between all of the versions. I'll try and target that later tonight when I get a chance.

The gradient is tricky as to get it perfect, I need many screenshots (getting the hues right in one still can mean artifacts in others, so I have to know where the gradient starts and at what rate to return the neighboring colors to the original colors to eliminate them.

[takarajima]

諸行無常・・・・・・・

[Raykugen]

Namek sky is green, it has nosense if it is blue

[Metalwario64]

I'll try and target that later tonight when I get a chance.

Nice. Also, I'm curious as to how the blue Earth sky looks at the beginning of the film on the Dragon Boxes, and if it's green whether it has any effect on Namek's sky when you try to correct it.

Here's a FUNimation single DVD shot for reference:

[ect5150]

Ok... targeting the hue of the posted animation cel yields the following results (even though its looks more like the DVDs, it is the same hue, but I think it's look nicer now).

These are all PNG's, so to save everyone bandwidth, click to enlarge:



And for fun, I just desaturated my script to compare to the VHS screens.



Also, a few screens on earth's blue sky as requested in several versions--

Original DVD screenshot--


Screenshot with color cast removed as described in the first few posts of this thread--


Then further through my own script (which doesn't appear to really be altered since I'm targeting a different color/hue -- glancing really fast at all three look the same, I'd have to stare to see the color cast removed here)--


It's odd how the blue earth sky is no where near the same blue level as the screen posted earlier.

I want to smooth my gradient just a bit for the final version, but I'm feeling pretty good about the colors this time around-- feedback?

[Corpsecreate]

So I have now completely corrected the entire Z series. I have a collection of 100 .png files for those that want to see some before/after shots.

NOTE: I also did some filtering (grain removal, sharpening etc)

http://www.mediafire.com/?y79gqpnabpb7b4e

Let me know what you think on the filtering and/or the colours.

[eledoremassis02]

fantastic job! You should have remastered Kai for TOEI

[superrayman3]

I'm impressed Corpsecreate that's some of the best color correction I've seen in this thread yet.