Banding Help!!!!

[tashcia]

I need some advice on processing images without having banding in the end result.
I receive several high res files from a variety of photographers daily, but lately have noticed that most of these images have terrible banding issues, whether the shot was taken outdoors or in a studio, they all use different treatments and methods to get to the end result. Some try to eliminate banding by adding noise, but this is not ideal. Could anyone give me advice on how to eliminate this banding problem?

Thank you

[mistermonday]

Tashcia, welcome to RetouchPro. There are different types of banding and different causes of it. Are you receiving Raw or jpg files. It is also possible that what you are swing is not banding. The best thing to do is attach an example or two. Just crop a small section that is affected or post a high Res image somewhere.
Regards, Murray

[Pictus]

Some type of banding/posterization occur only in the monitor, some nom pro ones that do not have internal hardware LUT, if it is the case you can try to minimize the effects by pre adjusting the RGB values to 6500K and doing the calibration in native mode, sometimes reducing the RGB values to the minimum also helps the calibration, using a better puck and/or a TOP software like ColorEyes Display Pro may help too.

Video cards, LUTs, 8-bits? What IS all this???
http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/Monito..._this.3F.3F.3F



The other issue is to always works in 16 bit mode(RAW, TIF) *NOT* JPG 8 bit.

JPG = HELL


8-bit Versus 16-bit in Photoshop (or How I learned to stop worrying and love pictures with smooth skies)
http://bigswing.us/weblog/8bit_versu...photoshop.html

[Flashtones]

I sometimes get banding on smooth tones even in 16 bit if I pull a steep curve on it. Adding noise to the layer mask can help.