rbelyell
Well-known
lately ive been noticing an increasing amount of 'banding', in clear sky and highlight clouds, with a variety of different equipment, like my gxr which ive had fo a couple years + different lenses; as well as some other cam/lens combos, and fixed lens cams. i really never noticed it, certainly not to this kind of increasing degree, before id say this past 9 or so months.
what i,m getting is the visual equivalent of an echo: a series of shadowy concentric lines or semi circular line, like repetive 'shadowing', my understanding of the technical term 'banding'. its not always overly apparent. sometimes i have to strain to see it, but i am seeing it increasingly.
ive been running LR for years and ive been using the same macbook since 2008. now ive read that sometimes monitors degrade, and i'm wondering if anyone knows if banding can be caused by anything other than camera interacting with lens? can it be caused by LR? can it be caused by a deteriorating monitor?
also, is there any way to deal with banding in PP?
thanks so much!
tony
what i,m getting is the visual equivalent of an echo: a series of shadowy concentric lines or semi circular line, like repetive 'shadowing', my understanding of the technical term 'banding'. its not always overly apparent. sometimes i have to strain to see it, but i am seeing it increasingly.
ive been running LR for years and ive been using the same macbook since 2008. now ive read that sometimes monitors degrade, and i'm wondering if anyone knows if banding can be caused by anything other than camera interacting with lens? can it be caused by LR? can it be caused by a deteriorating monitor?
also, is there any way to deal with banding in PP?
thanks so much!
tony
willie_901
Veteran
Most references to banding are about parallel vertical or horizontal artifacts with different luminosities and, or color casts.
What you describe sounds more as if the sharpening parameters in the development module were unintentionally set to inappropriately large values.
But without any examples to view, this is just a guess.
What you describe sounds more as if the sharpening parameters in the development module were unintentionally set to inappropriately large values.
But without any examples to view, this is just a guess.
rbelyell
Well-known
thanks willie. its not easy to put into words, but what im seeing can definitely be charachterized as parrellel horizontal lines of varying luminosity. can you see it here, in the center-frame 'V' of the sky where it comes up from the tree line?
sevo
Fokutorendaburando
On electronic equipment, it usually is due to sensor over exposure causing crosstalk. In theory LCD monitors might also have similar phenomena - but it does not seem to be a common issue, at any rate Google does not turn up anything (TFT banding has plenty of results, but they all refer to aliasing or colour depth issues).
djhurley92
Established
Can you see this in the actual negative? Do you scan 16 bit tiff files or some other kind of RAW? If you do, can you see the banding in those? It could be a jpeg artifact, if the colour bit depth is only 8bit.
(and BTW, I can see the banding, although very subtly, on a IPS monitor, so it probably isn't due to TFT or monitor quality issues)
In fact, I'm sure it's due to the limits of 8 bit colour depth, which is good enough for everything except close inspection. No matter what file type, if there's a smooth gradient and the colour depth is only 8 bit, you'll probably be able to see some banding.
Thanks
(and BTW, I can see the banding, although very subtly, on a IPS monitor, so it probably isn't due to TFT or monitor quality issues)
In fact, I'm sure it's due to the limits of 8 bit colour depth, which is good enough for everything except close inspection. No matter what file type, if there's a smooth gradient and the colour depth is only 8 bit, you'll probably be able to see some banding.
Thanks
sevo
Fokutorendaburando
That is a colour depth issue, usually at file level, if you scan to regular 24/32 bit files - 8 bits per channel is not enough to be perfectly seamless in critical midtones. Skies are particularly vulnerable as the human eye perceives very small hue differences in that orange-to-blue transition range. Increase the bit depth (to 16 or more bits per channel) before performing any operations on critical images. Adding judicious amounts of noise and blur in the critical regions will reduce these artefacts, while de-noising and sharpening can make matters significantly worse - apply them selectively, if any!
It can of course also happen on monitors, if these are the limiting factor - if so, the banding will remain even if you increase the bit depth and blur the picture. Or at the scanner level, if the scan line has less colour depth than the file (unusual, though - most scanners are nominally 12 or 16 bit per channel, and have at least 10 bit s/n ratio).
rbelyell
Well-known
im sorry, these are not scans, they are from digicams, typically ooc jpegs. no scanner involved, no film.
sevo
Fokutorendaburando
Saving RAW might help. If the cameras don't have a RAW option, try disabling all sharpening, noise reduction and image "enhancement" settings.
ricnak
Well-known
I have had the same problem. Drove me nuts for a few nights there when I was getting some pics ready to print for the grandparents Xmas calendars. I'm no geek and don't know the jargon, but for me, it seems to happen especially with uniform blue skies. It seems to have something to do with the clarity slider in Lightroom and the effect is exaggerated when converting the files to JPEG from Lightroom. Happens in both colour and B&W. Seems worse with M9 files than say Rocoh gxr or sigma dpm files. The good news is that is does not show up when printed.
rbelyell
Well-known
thx ricnac: are you saying if one applies selective 'declarifying' itll disappear? have you thought of using another program?
rbelyell
Well-known
sevo: thx. ive tried shooting raw, same effect. i thought it was the jpeg engine, but it seems to effect raw as well.
djhurley92
Established
What camera do you use? If you see it in RAW, maybe your lightroom is set to preview at 8 bit? Using RAW or 16 bit tiff to capture and edit and then finally saving in 8 bit will reduce the banding as much as possible (this may be what you are doing), exporting and printing in 16 bit may be optimum with no banding but then larger files / lower compatibility. And uploading to the internet will convert back to 8 bit and the rounding errors will result in banding 
.
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/posterization.htm
I don't think there is a simple solution other than learning about bit depth and how to work with it.
.http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/posterization.htm
I don't think there is a simple solution other than learning about bit depth and how to work with it.
rbelyell
Well-known
ive used a couple different cameras: gxr and different lenses, epl5 and different lenses and rx1. i never had this problem with the same setup until about 9 months ago, thats why i thought it was a LR or monitor degradation issue...
djhurley92
Established
Fair enough, well banding certainly looks different on different monitors depending on how well they deal with colour depth. You may have accidentally changed your monitor profile or LR settings so that it deals with banding in a less flattering way? E.g., the Lightroom viewing profile bit depth may be set to 8 bit sRGB, despite the files being RAW. Or alternatively, if the effect is reasonably mild, it might just be you've recently tuned your visual perception to pick out banding, where you couldn't see it before. Like when people first notice how interlacing works on TVs and can never happily watch tennis again...
willie_901
Veteran
I think you should export two version of this image as a full sized TIFF file from LR with all settings zeroed and with the settings you used here.
Then view the tiff on a friend's/family member's computer and see if these artifacts are still visible.
My guess is what you are seeing is an issue with your computer.
Then view the tiff on a friend's/family member's computer and see if these artifacts are still visible.
My guess is what you are seeing is an issue with your computer.
rbelyell
Well-known
here is another, more typical and easy to see version of the effect im getting. see the striations in the two middle clouds:
Sid836
Well-known
This is posterization and it is due to inadequate color depth. Use Adobe RGB while shooting and while saving jpgs save for the web in sRGB using some good software like Photoshop that will smartly dither the colors in the new color space.
rbelyell
Well-known
nikos thank you for your reply. may i follow up with a couple of questions: since ive been using the same LR/monitor setup for years, why is it suddenly 'inadequate'? second, i shot this as a b&w jpeg, no raw counterpart, so does 'color depth' problems still pertain? is LR an inadequate program for full color replication? is the problem sofware or camera related, or how my camera, here the rx1, interacts with my particular software? if software is the issue, which would you recommend over LR?
thank you again, much appreciated!
tony
thank you again, much appreciated!
tony
Sid836
Well-known
It could be after an upgrade of the LR that had affected the defaults of your export. Check to see what conversions are applied to your exports and also the quality of the jpegs.
LR does a great job, it must be some conversion that has suddenly popped into your workflow.
For the web make sure you always save things in sRGB.
LR does a great job, it must be some conversion that has suddenly popped into your workflow.
For the web make sure you always save things in sRGB.
BLKRCAT
75% Film
ugh... I posted in another thread almost about this same topic.
Color depth =/= sRGB, Adobe RGB.
This is color SPACE. Color space is the value of gamma appled to an image so that it displays properly in a digital medium like LCD, or from a digital printer etc. I could get into why this is but its actually quite complicated to explain.
Color Depth, or as I call it Bit Rate is the amount of color information that is available in an image. Saving out files in 8-bit can cause banding like this because an 8-bit image is only able to display 255 colors. So it kind of rounds between colors and this rounding is where you get the banding.
If you were editing from raw and you were to save out a 16-bit image your banding will decrease or even disappear altogether. In some gradients, very subtle ones, banding can still occur. Adding noise will reduce the banding at a cost of noise.
lastly you can save out 32-bit images. Camera raw should be 32 bit. With millions of colors available the gradients are smooth because no rounding happens between colors. You should maybe revisit your workflow because as a VFX designer, I only run into banding when I'm creating things from scratch. Or when compositing from 3d and adding lots of glows and edge blur and such.
I hope this helps.
Color depth =/= sRGB, Adobe RGB.
This is color SPACE. Color space is the value of gamma appled to an image so that it displays properly in a digital medium like LCD, or from a digital printer etc. I could get into why this is but its actually quite complicated to explain.
Color Depth, or as I call it Bit Rate is the amount of color information that is available in an image. Saving out files in 8-bit can cause banding like this because an 8-bit image is only able to display 255 colors. So it kind of rounds between colors and this rounding is where you get the banding.
If you were editing from raw and you were to save out a 16-bit image your banding will decrease or even disappear altogether. In some gradients, very subtle ones, banding can still occur. Adding noise will reduce the banding at a cost of noise.
lastly you can save out 32-bit images. Camera raw should be 32 bit. With millions of colors available the gradients are smooth because no rounding happens between colors. You should maybe revisit your workflow because as a VFX designer, I only run into banding when I'm creating things from scratch. Or when compositing from 3d and adding lots of glows and edge blur and such.
I hope this helps.