banding?

[STRAT]

Hi guys.

 

never bothered my in 15 years, but recently i been rendering stuff with gradient backrounds from white to blue. they look fine when rendered.

 

but when opened in photoshop you look cloesely and can make out a banding in the gradient. it's quite noticable when you see it. and it's a photoshop issue as when i view the rendered file in another app it looks perfect.

 

see what i mean? (image straight from ps) -

 

 

as i say, never noticed it before, but then, i dont often use grads.

 

whats the fix fellers?

[Victor Erthal]

Hi Strat.

Rendered a test here and this banding did not show up. Witch version of max are you using? Also, it's a gradient or a gradient ramp?

[ecastillor]

O could never put my finger on it strat...the same happened to me years ago....The i just decided to put the gradient in PS.....problem solved!

[STRAT]

vict - nono, it aint a renderer problem. it's a photoshop problem.

 

it's a true backround gradient rendered in cinema 4d. looks superb in c4d. also, the image looks spot on in windows image viewer.

 

it's photoshop is where it looks banded.

 

 

eca - aye, i tried making a lovely gradient directly in photoshop too. looked spot on it did, even when i applied it as a backround in c4d. worked perfect. but as soon as i take that c4d rendered image back to ps it bands slightly.

 

and i know for a fact it aint c4d.

[Victor Erthal]

that's weird. is you photoshop cs2?

[Ernest Burden III]

What display profile are you using? Ah, see--you never thought of that!

 

Photoshop allows for differing display profiles, everything from a standard sRGB to ones written (by PS or other apps or the monitor maker) for your monitor or for a specific output device to 'soft proof' output. They can make a huge visual difference while not actually affecting your data.

 

So its not so much a Photoshop prolem as yet another sub-system to learn.

[STRAT]

EB - yup, i had looked at them

 

but ur right, i dont generally (if ever) touched them before. and yes, i figured the image was always correct all along, it's the display method in ps that is wrong.

 

but now you've confirmed it i'll look deeper into different settings what ur saying in essence is that every individual monitor might need it's own display profile in ps.

 

thank you

[Ernest Burden III]

Sorry to suggest you hadn't thought of it, I've sullied your honor.

 

Yes, you would create a monitor profile, easily enough with Adobe's little application (which i always forget how to find) and set that as a softproof profile. That doesn't guarentee that your display will be accurate, either. There's all the rest of the screen calibration stuff, mentioned in the recent thread by Chris Nichols.

 

I've had the same issues, of course.

[Mat@MDI-Digital]

looks like cmyk, and not rgb....do you have cmyk preview on?

[STRAT]

thanks Mat, but read up, problem solved

[4DM]

Not sure it is a screen profile issue.

 

If you open the Info pallette, and then carefully run the cursor (Marquee tool) up the gradient, a pixel at a time you will see occasions when the increase in Cyan is not constant, and in fact reduces now and again, even though the cursor is rising.

 

This must mean that the file pixel info. and therefore the gradient itself, is not constant.

 

Rendering to 16 bit might prevent banding?

Never done it myself though.

Does anyone here?

(I would expect longer rendering times (how long=?) and larger file sizes, but much more colour information.)

 

D.