There are few things in life that get me wound up more than banding problems. It doesn’t matter if you are working at 72 or 300 resolution, it will eventually come to haunt you and will be largely based on the color combination you are using in your gradient. Before considering altering your colors or the contrast between them, let’s try and correct it. I discovered this technique about 2 years ago after trying countless methods that never really gave me the results I was looking for.
The image below shows banding in action.
Once you have your gradient made and notice some banding, the first step is to duplicate the gradient layer by dragging it onto the new layer icon. Now make sure you are working on your gradient copy layer and go to the filter menu and select gaussian blur.
You want to add a large amount blur but make sure you don’t alter the colors by adding too much. When adding a large amount of blur you will create some transparency on your edges. To make sure this doesn’t affect your gradient, make sure you leave your original gradient turned on and directly below the copy.
Now, click the new layer icon at the bottom of your layers pallet while holding down option (alt for PC)
After clicking the new layer button, a new layer dialog box should appear if you were holding down the option or alt key. First change the mode to Overlay and then select the Fill with overlay – neutral color (50% – gray) box. Change the layer name to something simple like gray overlay and hit the ok button.
You should not notice any changes in the document besides a new layer in the layers palette. Now go to the filter menu and select add noise.
When adding noise, the amount you select will be different for every gradient. You want to make sure you use very little because too much will give it a noticeable texture. It’s a very fine line and in some cases you will have to decide if a little more texture is better than not completely eliminating the streaks. Just remember you can always lower the opacity of the noise layer if you later decide it’s too much.
For the last step I like to go around the edges with a soft brush in the darker areas and mask out some of the noise so I can blend it in with a solid color easier. If you don’t do this, you will have some very obvious hard edges. You might also add a new layer and select the gradient tool going from solid to transparent adding a slight gradient to the edges in the color of your choice. If this were going to the web then that’s how I would do it.
Now that we have our gradient corrected we can move on to bigger and better things like finishing our design! Thanks for following along.
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this is cool, thanks – I had no idea it was possible
this is cool, thanks – I had no idea it was possible
Great post, I have often wondered how to do this!
Great post, I have often wondered how to do this!
Thanks for sharing this! I always ask to myself why Adobe doesn't fix it…
Thanks for your replies buddies. Appreciated!
Thanks for sharing this! I always ask to myself why Adobe doesn't fix it…
Thanks for sharing this! I always ask to myself why Adobe doesn't fix it…
Thanks for your replies buddies. Appreciated!
Thanks for your replies buddies. Appreciated!
Very impressive tips :-) thanks for sharing it.
Very impressive tips :-) thanks for sharing it.
Man. Those bands have been driving me crazy forever. Thanks for the tip.
Man. Those bands have been driving me crazy forever. Thanks for the tip.
Seriously i never try this technique.LOL. i find it useful.thanks for sharing :)
Brilliant! I saved this page to save me countless headaches in the future. Thanks!
this is for jpg too?
Flattening gradient layers while working in 16 bit per channel mode (8 bit per channel is normal) and then reducing color space back to 8 bit per channel should also make it dither. I personally always make my gradients using the gradient tool, since it has a dithering option that also nicely, non-hackishly reduces banding.
thanks, it works!!!!
I love you. Actually.
no homo
Thanks very much, incredible technique. Saved me.
Very nice, thanks :)
That's a great tip! Thanks a lot!
Martin
excellent !!! I will try this technic
Banding are a small but huge problem at the same time
thanks for share your skills around this !
THANK YOU!! I have been trying to figure this out forever and most of the solutions I have found online just didn't do the trick for me. This one worked like a charm.
You just saved my butt!!! Thanks!
nice try!
Good stuff. Useful!!!
I use smart filters. They allow tweaking and fine tuning of the filter effects after they have been applied. Awesome stuff!
I create a duplicate layer of my gradient layer and create smart object.
Then I add noise basically the same way as above as a smart filter. Opacity around 15-20%.
And ON TOP of that, I add a gaussian blur filter with a low pixel radius, between 1.2 and 1.8 pixels. Opacity around 30-40%. This effectively works as the opposite of the noise and can help to make the noise a bit larger which is SPECIFIC TO how large your image is. You will need bigger noise if your gradient has very visible shifts, especially at very high resolutions.
Then the final step is to use the smart filter mask to remove the effect where it becomes visible in medium-dark areas or whatever.
If you have a grey mask in CMYK, you may find it useful to use luminosity mode for the whole layer.
very good tip, thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing this very useful tip.
Its a pleasure.
Like your writing skill! Even though you should try to make a few things to improve it.
Like your writing skill! Even though you should try to make a few things to improve it.Thanks.
Sure, can you please tell us what you didn’t liked.