Off topic: banding in gradients, plus link
Off topic: banding in gradients, plus link
- Subject: Off topic: banding in gradients, plus link
- From: tflash <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2000 19:31:02 -0500
I meant to include this link and description (made by someone who had the
same concerns as me) in case it should aid the discussion:
http://www.kulmbach.net/~aardvark/BandingTest.htm
I made black to white and black to 50% gray gradients, with and
without noise added. Logically, the black to 50% gray pics show
more banding because I took a smaller amount of info and stretched
it the same length as the black to white gradients.
I used Save for Web, 100% quality jpg, no smoothing. Someone
asked why not use smoothing/blurring to mask the banding, but
actually, that makes the effect even worse (for monitor display).
Does anyone see banding in the smooth grads w/o noise (right top and
bottom), and is it a monitor thing or in the file?
Sorry if this is too far off topic but I pursued this on a Photoshop forum
and got inconclusive answers; as this list seems to have the greatest brain
trust of all those that I lurk, well...
When I make grayscale gradients in Photoshop 6 in Adobe RGB mode the image
contains banding on my monitor. I messed with it in grayscale and lab modes
too with no betterment. Many people on the forum concurred with me, and the
consensus from this group was to add noise to the gradient to meliorate the
situation (but this doesn't give me the nice smooth grads I'm looking for).
Others said they don't see the banding at all in such gradients and it must
be a display card situation. We all agreed that we were viewing the
gradients with our monitors set to millions of colors (my situation is a
Lacie electron 22 blue, Mac G4 (AGP graphics) w/ 16 meg video RAM, system
9.04, PS6).
I printed my gradient as a test, but frankly on my Epson 1270 there is such
color shift and non linearity of output across this grayscale gradient it's
hard to be sure, but I think there is in fact less banding in the print.
What do you all think is up for those of us who do see the banding in our
gradients?
Todd