Damn banding

[Levy Davish]

Last week I shot the eclipse close to sunrise and the light was just bight beautiful blue with a thin yellow moon. I didnt really need to much of editing to get what I wanted to so I uploaded it to my page in Facebook and bammm, banding from top to bottom. I tried to add noise to the sky which helped a little but still to much banding. Just mention that in lightroom / FS there's no banding what so ever. does anyone know how to get rid of it?
here's the photo with the noise

 

[Ken Rennie]

Levy is it possible to download the image from facebook and post it here so that I (we) can see what the effect. I visited your fb site but couldn't see it. Hope I can help Ken

 

[Levy Davish]

Levy is it possible to download the image from facebook and post it here so that I (we) can see what the effect. I visited your fb site but couldn't see it. Hope I can help Ken

Thank you so much Ken. I deleted the photo, It's not acceptable for me. You can see the banding in the image I uploaded in this thread and here's a link to G+ https://plus.google.com/photos/phot...935&ssid=594bd8bf-9cd9-4043-a592-5976b8db3747

 

[Kyle Jones]

I do see the banding in the image posted in this thread. Looks like JPG compression banding - especially as you said it doesn't show up in LR/PS. How are you converting to JPG?

 

[Ben Egbert]

I can see the banding on the linked image on my 4k monitor. I never figured out how to fix this with my 5D mk3.

Ben

 

[Ken Rennie]

Hi Levy I have tried to reproduce the banding effect that you show and have finally managed but only by mangling my files. I started with a moon just before dawn RAW shot that was properly exposed. I reduced the resolution as banding will be more apparent with a smaller file. No matter what I did I could not reproduce the banding. I darkened it 3 stops converted it to a jpeg reprocessed it lightening it the 3 stops put in elliptical lightening far more than you seem to have, exported it to facebook, reimported it and still no banding in photoshop but I can see it on this site. Note nobody would do this to an image.

In this case I started with a recent file that I had deliberately underexposed by 4 stops. Again a moonshot just before dawn. I reduced the resolution and brightened it 4 stops in RAW, no banding. So with the banded image posted below with a 4 stop underexposed shot I converted it to a jpeg brightened it by 4 stops and obtained banding. No real surprise an 8 bit file has 256 levels 4 stops underexposed it has only 16 levels so a smooth gradation will be banded into no more than 16 levels and that if it goes from white to black since it doesn't the banding will be more extreme. Personally I don't often find banding to be a major problem in facebook, sharpening and edges are a major problem everyone may have different views.

So what does this tell us. If the file started as a properly exposed RAW file and the lightening of the sky happened in ACR ot Lightroom (ie as a 12/14/16 bit file then I can't see how this happens. If the file started as an underexposed 12/14/16bit RAW file then I still can't really see how you get banding lightening it in Photoshop or Lightroom. If however you start with an underexposed jpeg or do the lightening as an 8 bit file then it is easy to get banding. I have kept clear of the mathematics but am willing to go into it but all too often people use mathematics the same way that a drunk uses a lampost "for support not illumination". It may be a good case for letting this community loose on the RAW file as a challenge, I would certainly enjoy it. I hope that this helps even if in a negative way. Ken

 

[Levy Davish]

I do see the banding in the image posted in this thread. Looks like JPG compression banding - especially as you said it doesn't show up in LR/PS. How are you converting to JPG?

I do see the banding in the image posted in this thread. Looks like JPG compression banding - especially as you said it doesn't show up in LR/PS. How are you converting to JPG?

Thank you Kyle. I use the LR export as usual and the export of FS as well

 

[Levy Davish]

Hi Levy I have tried to reproduce the banding effect that you show and have finally managed but only by mangling my files. I started with a moon just before dawn RAW shot that was properly exposed. I reduced the resolution as banding will be more apparent with a smaller file. No matter what I did I could not reproduce the banding. I darkened it 3 stops converted it to a jpeg reprocessed it lightening it the 3 stops put in elliptical lightening far more than you seem to have, exported it to facebook, reimported it and still no banding in photoshop but I can see it on this site. Note nobody would do this to an image.View attachment 15798

In this case I started with a recent file that I had deliberately underexposed by 4 stops. Again a moonshot just before dawn. I reduced the resolution and brightened it 4 stops in RAW, no banding. So with the banded image posted below with a 4 stop underexposed shot I converted it to a jpeg brightened it by 4 stops and obtained banding. No real surprise an 8 bit file has 256 levels 4 stops underexposed it has only 16 levels so a smooth gradation will be banded into no more than 16 levels and that if it goes from white to black since it doesn't the banding will be more extreme. Personally I don't often find banding to be a major problem in facebook, sharpening and edges are a major problem everyone may have different views. View attachment 15799

So what does this tell us. If the file started as a properly exposed RAW file and the lightening of the sky happened in ACR ot Lightroom (ie as a 12/14/16 bit file then I can't see how this happens. If the file started as an underexposed 12/14/16bit RAW file then I still can't really see how you get banding lightening it in Photoshop or Lightroom. If however you start with an underexposed jpeg or do the lightening as an 8 bit file then it is easy to get banding. I have kept clear of the mathematics but am willing to go into it but all too often people use mathematics the same way that a drunk uses a lampost "for support not illumination". It may be a good case for letting this community loose on the RAW file as a challenge, I would certainly enjoy it. I hope that this helps even if in a negative way. Ken

Wow what a deep deep research you made Ken. I really appreciate it and learned from it

This is the relevant file details IMHO looks fine so I still dont know actually why it happened

 

[Kyle Jones]

Thank you Kyle. I use the LR export as usual and the export of FS as well

My usual workflow is to expert from LR to Photoshop as a 16bit file in the ProPhoto RGB color space. I do all of my edits, keeping the file in 16bit ProPhoto. When I'm done I save the file as a TIFF, again keeping it 16bit and ProPhoto. To export to web I'll access the file in LR and export as an 8bit JPG in SRGB. Doing this I've never seen any significant banding.

 

[JimFox]

I appreciate the work Ken has done digging into this issue, it was very educational.

The only time I have encountered banding was back in the old days of shooting in jpg or accidently when using Photoshop Elements on a Travel laptop not realizing that it's raw converts to 8 bit instead of 16 bit.

 

[Levy Davish]

My usual workflow is to expert from LR to Photoshop as a 16bit file in the ProPhoto RGB color space. I do all of my edits, keeping the file in 16bit ProPhoto. When I'm done I save the file as a TIFF, again keeping it 16bit and ProPhoto. To export to web I'll access the file in LR and export as an 8bit JPG in SRGB. Doing this I've never seen any significant banding.

Thank you Kyle. I'll try this and let you know

 

[Levy Davish]

So eventually I think that I found a proper way to export a monochromatic file like this. In FB I choose from Export / export for web, 100% jpeg and it worked for me but the file is huge (39M). I tried Flickr this time : https://www.flickr.com/photos/drjdam/46896817611/in/dateposted-public/

 

[Ken Rennie]

Levy my workflow is identical to Kyle's. If I want to produce an image for facebook or here I go to File Export and the following dialogue appears.

This dialogue lets you selct jpeg and the color space (sRGB) If you click on Resize to Fit you can set the maximum Width and / or Height and Sharpen for screen. Apologies if you already know all of this. Ken