Think you've got banding? Photoshop may be fooling you!

► frb.li/wwoga
Have you ever worked on an image in Photoshop, adding multiple adjustment layers and then found that your image displays some horrible banding. While banding is a real problem that occurs in some situations, it may also simply be Photoshop that’s playing tricks on you. In this tutorial, I will show you why this happens and what you can do to prevent real banding instead of fixing it.

[@dirkpludwig]

You explained the issue very well. Thanks for that. Just a few comment from my side regarding the PS banding issue.
First, switching to 16 Bit mode does not prevent PS to display fake banding - at least not in every case. This is quite obvious, since your example photo _is_ in 16 Bit mode and still shows banding. The reason for this is, that 16 Bit image depth has to be supported by the complete processing chain of your system. Starting from your operating system. Over to your graphics card and its driver. Ending with your monitor. While typical OS and display in normal cases do support 16 Bit by default (actually it should support 32 Bit), the graphic card or its driver often doesn't. In order to check that you can try the following (Windows 10): Right click on the desktop, open display settings, then click on advanced settings. This will open a dialog presenting the Bit depth currently being used.In case your it is using 8 Bit you got the following options: Try to adjust settings for your graphic gard driver, update your driver, or get a new graphic card (in that order).
Second, an alternative way for checking if you got real banding in your image in PS is to merge all visible layers (ctrl-alt-shift-e on Windows) and then open the Camera Raw filter. If no banding shows up there, then you have "fake" banding.

[@santeenl]

I still see banding @3:38 actually?

[@michebre]

Thank you so much, very informational, greatly appreciate your tutorial on banding prevention.

[@funland108]

Thanks very much for this, you've saved me a LOT of unnecessary work!

[@RealtorMartin]

Like the new intro/outro music and graphics.

[@ant0n1os]

Unfortunately this doesn't work for me. I like creating vignette by making a circle mask on a black layer, then adding feather and choosing soft light. I usually put 2 or 3 such layers and that's where the problem starts. It creates oval banding that remains even if I zoom in, export, or work on 16 bits.

[@ant0n1os]

Ok, my fault. After changing to 16 bits, I didn't zoom in to check if something changed. Indeed, it disappeared. Just for cases like mine, I would suggest changing to 16 bit AFTER finishing the processing, or it might take really much longer saving times.
However, how is it possible that after saving in JPEG it's saved with 24 bits (so, 8 bits per channel) but no banding appears?

[@fredericobreslau4495]

Thx man! I was going bold.

[@MorinProductions]

Good to know information, thanks

[@CachSoul]

Well done but stop breathing in microphone please.

[@nerdrage4852]

@@SimonMusicTV hahahaa i was looking for this :D

[@michaellimstudio2410]

How about editing the photos in Lightroom but when I export it in my desktop and preview the photos the banding is there. When i check the images in Lightroom it has no banding at all? Can you help me with this pls?