Sailor Moon Color Correction

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lansing

Luna Nova
May 26, 2018
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Glad to also see other people still doing this. Got back to grinding myself after some time. Managed to do a few episodes in Davinci Resolve by now. I would say it’s going alright even if snail paced because of limited free time.



One episode tends to take me somewhere between 6-8 hours going scene to scene. It’s no joke and I've only done three. After a while I really start to appreciate why this is a profession that a colorist gets paid for. The time sink is enormous.:lol:

The other thing that grinds my pace are animations that repeat across episodes. They are harder to color correct due to being more faded than the rest. It’s tedious doing so much repetition.
Yeah, realistically this sort of project has to be funded in order for it to go anywhere. Nobody is spending thousands of hours on it without paid.
 

blastilonic

Lapis Lunaris
Sep 11, 2024
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All the laser disc episodes can be found anywhere online?

I want to check them to compare some difference between the Italian DVDs and the laser discs colors.
 
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Likes: Starlight

lansing

Luna Nova
May 26, 2018
73
150
165
All the laser disc episodes can be found anywhere online?

I want to check them to compare some difference between the Italian DVDs and the laser discs colors.
There used to be a LD rip of the first 12 episodes in archive.org, but it took taken down about a month ago. There is a vhs rip from this forum, you can check them out:

Senshi Fansubs - episode downloads (VHS rips)
 

lansing

Luna Nova
May 26, 2018
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I just made a video tutorial on color correcting Sailor Moon. I have spent the last few years refining the approach and it should work on most anime in general. Most of the functions I used though are program specific, so I don't know if it can be replicated in other video editing software, but I think it's still worth it to put the information out.

 

blastilonic

Lapis Lunaris
Sep 11, 2024
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I just made a video tutorial on color correcting Sailor Moon. I have spent the last few years refining the approach and it should work on most anime in general. Most of the functions I used though are program specific, so I don't know if it can be replicated in other video editing software, but I think it's still worth it to put the information out.

Wow! Thank you so so much for taking your time to teach us how to do it.

I watched the video, but I will have to watch it a second time cause there is a lot of information and I don't want to miss anything.
 
Likes: Starlight

lansing

Luna Nova
May 26, 2018
73
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I'm using 3D LUT Creator, using the "exact" like you do on your video ^_^
This frame has no gray cel color beside white, so you should adjust the RGB curve in the first step by eyes. After you match the white patch using the "exact" tool, look at the color swatch window and compare the working color and the reference color. Look for color that are too red/blue/red when compared to the reference color, and then start adjusting the RGB curves.

For example, this is what the colors look like right after matching the white patch.



We see that the yellow on the 3rd row is too blue and too green, and the red patch too blue. Then we adjust the RGB curve accordingly.
 

Lady Pen

Aurorae Lunares
Mar 12, 2021
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This series is in far greater need of a proper AI upscaling to high definition than any ' return to its original colours ', to be honest.
 
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ssjgodno78

Lapis Lunaris
Dec 5, 2024
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This series is in far greater need of a proper AI upscaling to high definition than any ' return to its original colours ', to be honest.
I do agree that a proper AI upscaling is needed, doing an AI upscaling and then leaving it as-is still wouldn't look good + there would have to be ALOT of work put into the upscale instead of just putting it into AI and just hoping for the best or else you're gonna have stuff like this. Any detail that was in the show is now gone + anything and I mean anything that is not in the centered shot is completely blurred. Not to mention the colors are still aged and has a tint that varies episode by episode.

 

ssjgodno78

Lapis Lunaris
Dec 5, 2024
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A proper AI upscaling would be impossible to do since the only thing Toei has with them is their upscale of the show. That's why Viz's version is terrible, their upscale is based off of an upscaled version of the masters Toei used to have. For a proper upscale to ever happen, someone would need to still have film reels of the show laying around.


Then, someone would have to take the time to carefully remove the grain and if the show aged terribly, they would have to correct the colors to some extent to make it look plausibly good.



Or else, a proper upscale would be impossible. The best bet into doing a "good" upscale of the show would be to use the Italian Dynit DVD's since those keep the grain and is the closest thing to an uncensored, non-upscaled version of the show and it might as well be the closest we'll ever get to untouched film of the show. But since Dynit didn't do anything to their film, you're still gonna be stuck with characters looking like they've been in the sun for days or the only color to ever exist was the color green.
 
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Likes: Starlight

sailormoongalaxy

Aurorae Lunares
Apr 16, 2013
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A proper AI upscaling would be impossible to do since the only thing Toei has with them is their upscale of the show. That's why Viz's version is terrible, their upscale is based off of an upscaled version of the masters Toei used to have. For a proper AI upscale to ever happen, someone would need to still have film reels of the show laying around.


Then, someone would have to take the time to carefully remove the grain and if the show aged terribly, they would have to correct the colors to some extent to make it look plausibly good.



Or else, a proper upscale would be impossible. The best bet into doing a "good" upscale of the show would be to use the Italian Dynit DVD's since those keep the grain and is the closest thing to an uncensored, non-upscaled version of the show and it might as well be the closest we'll ever get to untouched film of the show. And since Dynit didn't do anything to their film, you're still gonna be stuck with characters looking like they've been in the sun for days or the only color to ever exist was the color green.
The grain is part of the work, removing the grain is destroying the work.
 

Lady Pen

Aurorae Lunares
Mar 12, 2021
1,679
5,896
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Again, what’s far more pressing is an AI upscale from the Dynit DVDs that preserves all the details in the backgrounds and animation, rather than some pointless colour tweak that can easily be done later on.