Banding

[Bobby Reasons]

I have a Canon EOS 10D and a Canon EOS 17-40 L Lens with Circular PL. I have noticed that there is banding in the sky color. Can you tell me what I am doing wrong?

[Scottes]

Are you shooting in RAW or JPG? Are you doing any post-processing (what and how)?

An example image might help.

[cc10d]

Or do you mean, when it is printed?

[Jim_T]

Can you tell me what I am doing wrong?

Kind of difficult if you don't say what you're doing in the first place :)

Can you post a link to an original photo that shows the banding ? If you can, make sure the EXIF data is included..

Are you using RAW, JPEG ? What resolution.. Are you editing the images ? If so, how.. and with what software. ?

[Bobby Reasons]

You can check out these images at link below,they were shot JEPG not Raw,picture was resized in photoshop and added frame and sharpened.
The first two photos on the page are the ones that the sky looks ban

[Tom W]

I see it, though I can't explain it.

It looks like curved "stripes" in th sky, originating from the upper lefthand corner.

What resolution did you shoot at? Large JPEG or small? Normal or fine? What level did you save the final images at in photoshop? These are the only areas where I might expect a problem. Lower resolutions and/or saving at a more "lossy" setting in PS (I almost always save at level 10 or above) might cause this.

[Scottes]

This type of banding is almost always caused when one converts a high-color gradient to a low-color image. A gradient can contain *many* shades of a color, and when they get reduced to a low-color image posterization occurs and several/many subtle shades get reduced to a single color. This results in bands of distinct shades rather than a smooth graduation of subtle shades.

I downloaded the image and zoomed in. I saw a lot of JPG anomalies and the boxy look that JPG gives an image when is compressed a lot. It really seems that this banding was caused by the JPG compression. Given that a big part of JPG compression is color-reduction this makes sense, and the blocks seen when zoomed in pretty much nail compression as the cause of banding.


I would try saving the original at a higher compression. The image is 62KB which (IMHO) is small for a 780-wide image. Shoot for more like 80KB. Since you're using Photoshop 7 try Save For Web at a quality of 65-70. Zoom in to check for anomalies and blockiness before saving. If the file size is still too large then drop the frame or make it simpler. (Though this would be a shame - that's a great frame.)

[Andy_T]

What scottes said ... it's a result of JPEG conversion.

Experiment with
- shooting RAW and
- converting to 16-bit TIFF,
- doing the manipulations in Photoshop that you want to do
- (including resizing the picture for the Web) and then
- converting it to JPEG, using the 'highest quality' setting.

That has helped me sometimes.

Also, read up on the 'expose to the right' issue that was covered here recently.
Bottom line is .... a digital camera 'sees' more different shades in the light areas than in the dark areas of your picture.

Best regards,
Andy

[robertwgross]

It certainly builds a case for RAW versus JPEG, doesn't it?

You are shooting RAW, aren't you?

---Bob Gross---

[Laziferous]

It certainly builds a case for RAW versus JPEG, doesn't it?

You are shooting RAW, aren't you?
Yes, yes it does.

Mr. Reasons,if you aren't shooting RAW, start. Convert to TIFF, do your editing, then save as .JPG for web viewing. Your results will be MUCH cleaner.