Color/Banding problems while exporting

Question

Hello,
every time I export an edited RAW-file from LR 4.3 (64bit) to PS CS5 (64bit) or directly to disc, the exported version shows "color cuts" or "banding": Where there is a continious blue sky in LRs develop module, it looks like 6 stripes of different blue in PS and JPEG. When importing it to PS as "sRGB" it's a little better, but far from acceptable. I never experienced that behaviour before, but now have a new computer. I used LR for cropping and noise reduction before exporting. Any tipps? Thanks in advance,
Jan
PS: Win7 64bit, Canon 1d M3

Answer 1

Since things are fine in LR and ACR and the only problem is in PS, then I'd like to concentrate on the ACR/PS part of things without LR coming into the picture except maybe saving settings in the XMP file for PS/ACR to use.
So start with the NEF and corresponding XMP in a folder, and use PS / File / Open of the NEF and observe the ACR rendering, then click Open and observe the PS rendering.  From what you've said, earlier, I think the ACR version is ok and the PS version is not, right?
When you use PS / File / Open the ACR workflow options are important so that's why I asked what those were.  The normal situation would be to use ProPhotoRGB 16-bit and that information would be listed at the bottom of the ACR window before clicking Open and nothing to do with the configuration in LR:
Since things are fine in LR and ACR and the only problem is in PS, then I'd like to concentrate on the ACR/PS part of things without LR coming into the picture except maybe saving settings in the XMP file for PS/ACR to use.
So start with the NEF and corresponding XMP in a folder, and use PS / File / Open of the NEF and observe the ACR rendering, then click Open and observe the PS rendering.  From what you've said, earlier, I think the ACR version is ok and the PS version is not, right?
When you use PS / File / Open the ACR workflow options are important so that's why I asked what those were.  The normal situation would be to use ProPhotoRGB 16-bit and that information would be listed at the bottom of the ACR window before clicking Open and nothing to do with the configuration in LR.
The bit-depth of the image in PS are listed in the title bar of a document in PS:
The RGB Workspace options are in PS / Edit / Color Settings.  I would suggest you set this to ProPhotoRGB and have all the mismatch warnings enabled:
Besides these settings, you might also check the Conversion Options settings at the top right of the Color Settings panel.
The thing that both I and 21 have mentioned is the turn off the graphics card acceleration to make sure it isn't an OpenGL issue: