Visible banding on gradients

Does anyone experience banding when viewing images with gradients in them? I recently swapped a display from a 1GHz TiBook into a 1.67GHz Aluminum (non high-res) and have begun to notice this issue in the default OSX desktop wallpaper. Are the displays in the TiBooks not capable of full 24-bit color resolution?
TIA.

Well, I am pretty certain I didn't install the screen incorrectly. The screens are supposed to be interchangeable AFAIK.
I just noticed some faint banding on the default desktop pattern and on some gradients on some websites that I didn't see before with the old display.
I don't think the desktop pattern size is an issue. I'm currently viewing the same desktop on a 24" 1920x1200 LCD and it looks totally smooth on that screen with no discernable banding whatsoever.
Not a big deal, just curious.

Similar Messages

Banding.. yes banding in gradients

First of all Im not here to waste your time. I have read pretty much every thread on here about banding in gradients and there is no solution for my problem.
Details:
Illustrator CS
I experience awful banding in almost every gradient I do. It doesn't matter what the colors are. It happens more so in darks.
I cannot rasterize my work, so I can't do the gradients in PS, I can't add noise, etc. I am currently working on something that will later be resized for an art show. I work 100% in vector and unfortunetly, it has to stay that way.
Here is an example of what I'm working with. The darks.. the banding is horrid.
Ive tried re-setting my screen profile, but Ive had people on other computers tell me that they can see the banding.
I've tried RGB vs CMKY..
I mean, I really am at an end. Most of my work is viewed digitally, but I do need it to look good in print.
I wouldn't waste your time, I have spent the last week all over the internet trying to find a solution. I would think that these simple gradients would be possible in such a high end program I paid hundreds for, but really?!
Im near tears because I mean, this is my art. I just hate that it looks so terrible.
I thank ANYONE for their help, this is becoming such an issue for me.

any updates on this?
I noticed the gorgeous tones on the splash screens too, and would like to reproduce that softness...
I get what JET is saying, but I get the banding too on even just 2 similiar tones less than 12 inches apart. But from what Jet is saying I assume he means that the screen visual is not the same as the printing outcome and does not indicate the printing outcome.
a cheap or poor screen may show banding, but printed to a 5 thousand dollar printer may come out smooth when the vector is rasterized at 300 DPI on an A4 page.
I have banding on a photoshop image here actually, but I have seen lots of artwork with smooth creamy gradients or tonal blends painted on figures in character artwork, pinups and illustrations, or how to recreate the look of the opening splash screens of the software, wish I knew how to do that, i`m using a wacom bamboo with low opacity and brush pressure determines opacity in photoshop.
here is a black to transparent gradient layed over a flat mid gray layer. 10cm long. just showing you that the screen banding is not specific to only illustrator. using PS CS5 here.
same issue goes for brushes, here I used the largest softest default brush to fill this shape, still creates streaking.

Banding in gradients with Pavilion 22xi

I have been using a new Pavilion 22xi for a couple of weeks, and color settings remain problematic after much trial and error. My primary concern at this point is the significant banding in gradients. It's difficult for me to imagine that this would be considered expected performance, but thus far I have not been able to significantly reduce it.
My display is connected via HDMI cable to a Mac Mini running OS X 10.9.1. I have explored a variety of adjustments to both native display controls and the OS X color profile. So far, banding in gradients continues. I welcome any advice as to what I might do; if there are other details I can provide, just let me know.
Thanks.

Looking at your PDF it's difficult to tell exactly what's happening. I've had banding problems, however, in similar situations passing Illustrator files through Photoshop to be converted to high-resolution JPEGs for a very specific printer. Essentially, the file looks fine in Illustrator and fine in Photoshop until one significantly raises the white levels. The banding which then appears is very similar to the banding which appears upon printing. Can you see the errors in your file before they're printed? Or, only after printing?
Here's a couple thoughts... save Illustrator file as hi-res PDF. Use CS4 High-Quality Print presets. Open in Photoshop, rasterize at 300dpi in PS's opening dialog box. Flatten and save as TIFF, etc. for printing. May solve the problem.
Another setting to experiment with which may do nothing (and may cause the sky to fall) is to check your presets for Color Settings. Try setting Conversion Options > Intent > to Perceptual. This may make some users howl as Relative Colorimetric is the default setting for many users. However, it's been said to me that Perceptual is the correct setting to avoid banding in images with large gradients.
For more information on the differences between the two, check out: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/color-space-conversion.htm
Regarding the lines around placed images, I haven't dealt with that one. You may want to open the images in Photoshop and make sure there isn't some colored trim left over from the cropping process. Provided that isn't the case, try re-placing them before saving to PDF and moving to Photoshop.
Hope this helps.
Cheers!

Can rendering from Motion reduce banding on gradients in graphics?

I have created a 50-minute animated movie, the visuals all rendered from Flash Professional 8 in the Animation codec. They look stunning. Clean & beautiful with no banding or artifacts of any kind.
I edited the movie in FCP 4 using the DV sequence preset and output as DV NTSC. The finished product is mostly gorgeous but has some colour halos and noticeable banding in the gradients I would like to eliminate.
Question is: If I bought Motion (FCStudio), could I import the whole project into Motion and output it with float rendering would that eliminate the halos and banding? The source files are currently animation codec but could all be re-rendered as uncompressed 10 bit if necessary.
Or is there some other way to deal with banding in gradients and colour halos?
G5 dual 1.8Ghz Mac OS X (10.3.9)

I'm sure impressed with all the responses. Thank you.
As my original question had to do with buying Motion for the float rendering, I didn't give you enough detail to solve my problem in Flash & FCP4.
At least half of the gradients are in the foreground and the 3d renders, so compositing over a background won't help. I have tried all the high rez codecs and had the same problem. Sorry about wasting your time.
I have found an acceptable solution that might be worth noting.
The problem was in rendering it as a self-contained movie from FCP4. I had overlooked the CUSTOM setting under Export as QuickTIme which allowed me to ouput a REFERENCE MOVIE in ANIMATION codec ( I had previously tried outputting a reference movie in uncompressed 8&10bit but that made the actual real life DV footage in the movie terribly jittery).
The reference animation codec movie burned to DVD eliminated a lot of the banding and reduced the rest to a level that looks like a "style". The output is otherwise stunning in its clarity and colour, and for this project I am deeming that acceptable. I will buy FCP Studio and learn Motion and perhaps output an even cleaner master in future but not for this deadline.
Thank you all again for taking the time to reply.
G5 dual 1.8Ghz Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Will subtle banding in gradient print?

I apologize for yet another topic about gradients and banding, however i could not find a reassuring answer to my question.
As you can see, my gradient created in InDesign shows (subtle) banding on screen, both in InDesign as in Acrobat.
I know capable RIPs handle gradients in way that's optimized for the device to prevent banding as good as possible. But... are RIPs capable of producing better results than adobe's screen rendering?
What's the best way?
1. Trust the RIP, and send the pdf with "real" gradients (smooth shades are they called i believe) in the pdf.
OR
2. Recreate the gradient in Photoshop with dither, which makes it look perfect on screen.
The printer handles files up to pdf1.7, so assume their RIP is capable of optimizing smooth shades.

I got the results of the prints. The printed versions look almost identical, but there is a noticible difference:
The real gradient:
- shows banding on screen
- shows NO banding in print! The gradient looks really clean.
The photoshop dithered gradient:
- looks better on screen (no banding)
- no banding in print either, but a VERY subtle noise (the dither) is visible
Conclusion (with this printer anyway): leave the gradient as a gradient!

Banding on gradient

I have been trying to reduce the amount of banding on the long background image on our site.
http://stitch-technologies.com/
Seems that when I use a 1 pixel strip and repeat horizontally there is a slight amount of banding visible. Is there any good ways in Photoshop to reduce this? Has anyone here attempted using HTML5 gradient instead and seen if it causes less of an issue?

Simple computer math - any 8bit gradient will eventually show banding. even if you used CSS gradients they would band, if the distance to cover exceeds the available levels of gradation. realyl not much you can do than to rethink your design approach.
Mylenium

White Banding in Gradient Mesh

I recently upgraded to CS3 and now when I use the gradient mesh tool, using only two colors... a white band appears between the two colors. This didn't happen in Illustrator 10. I'm just trying to go from a Dark color to a lighter version of the same color to give a shading effect and the white banding throws it off.
Does using Pantone colors have anything to do with this ? It's driving me crazy.
Thanks

Unless you're printing hundreds, it will be digital. The cost of making plates for color work is high when you go on a press, so you need a lot of copies before that gets absorbed into the per unit cost of the finished product and can compete with the click charges for running the laser printer, which needs no plates and has practically no setup time for each job.
For a job run on my favorite printer's press I usually figure the minimum charge is $1500 (and that would cover any number of impressions up to around 500 copies). As the number of copies increases, the cost for paper, ink, and press time go up, but the very heavy cost of the plates and job setup gets sliced into smaller and smaller chunks until eventually you are paying only pennies per unit (or fractions of a penny). On the other hand, the color copier has a constant cost per page that is I think around $.25 each, whether you print one or one thousand. The setup cost is minimal (I don't know what my guy charges, but where I used to work, we charged $15 per file, and I think that is considered high these days, but it depends a lot on how hard they work on getting the color right).
I just got a quote this afternoon to print 2000 booklets in two colors, 16 pages plus cover, finished size 5.5 x 8.5 after folding and stapling. This is a perfect configuration for the laser printer which can do the finishing inline and spit out a finished booklet that needs no additional handling. It will cost about $3200.00 to run on the press, then trim, fold and stitch, but running it on the copier would be $6000.00. If I add another thousand coppies to the press run it will add perhaps another hundred or two hundred dollars, adding them to the copier run would probably add $2000.00 to $2500.00. On the other hand, if I only needed 50 copies, the digital print price would allow me to consider color where I never would have been able to do it ten years ago.
Peter

Banding in Gradients when printing

Issue #1: (page 1 of the attached PDF)
I gave a very large file that contains several gradients. I have to save it as a PDF to send it to the printer. When it prints (on an Epson large format printer) there is a spot in the gradient that becomes something between banding and over-large pixelization! (hard to describe) It doesn't happen everywhere on the gradient. I have a .png image placed over the Gradient, with a transparent background. The weird printing happens immediately after the box of the .PNG
Issue #2: (page 2 of the attached PDF)
To try to solve this problem, it was suggested that I print to the PDF printer and send the file that was then created. This resulted in a much smaller file, which did not create the banding/pixelization, but each one of my placed files has a thin line around them, which shows on the print. I tried embedding each of the linked files, but it still happens.
So, what can I do to get this file into a PDF which will then print properly?
thanks for any advice you can offer!
LLM

Looking at your PDF it's difficult to tell exactly what's happening. I've had banding problems, however, in similar situations passing Illustrator files through Photoshop to be converted to high-resolution JPEGs for a very specific printer. Essentially, the file looks fine in Illustrator and fine in Photoshop until one significantly raises the white levels. The banding which then appears is very similar to the banding which appears upon printing. Can you see the errors in your file before they're printed? Or, only after printing?
Here's a couple thoughts... save Illustrator file as hi-res PDF. Use CS4 High-Quality Print presets. Open in Photoshop, rasterize at 300dpi in PS's opening dialog box. Flatten and save as TIFF, etc. for printing. May solve the problem.
Another setting to experiment with which may do nothing (and may cause the sky to fall) is to check your presets for Color Settings. Try setting Conversion Options > Intent > to Perceptual. This may make some users howl as Relative Colorimetric is the default setting for many users. However, it's been said to me that Perceptual is the correct setting to avoid banding in images with large gradients.
For more information on the differences between the two, check out: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/color-space-conversion.htm
Regarding the lines around placed images, I haven't dealt with that one. You may want to open the images in Photoshop and make sure there isn't some colored trim left over from the cropping process. Provided that isn't the case, try re-placing them before saving to PDF and moving to Photoshop.
Hope this helps.
Cheers!

Banding in gradients and refresh failing

I have the stock GeForce4MX graphics card that came with this computer, and I think it might be going out. Not sure, but I bought a new 22" Chimei flatscreen and it has the same millions of colors and MHz as an Apple monitor I looked at. I calibrated the new screen but the contrast isn't quite right. Also, I'm getting banding in the gradient areas which is bad considering I'm a graphic designer. Plus I used to be able to play Pogo.com's Payday Freecell, but even before I got the flat screen, the refresh was dragging big time. I'd have to minimize the window to get it to clean up.
Anyone know if this sounds like the graphics card is failing? Any suggestions? Do I need to take the monitor back?

Looking at your PDF it's difficult to tell exactly what's happening. I've had banding problems, however, in similar situations passing Illustrator files through Photoshop to be converted to high-resolution JPEGs for a very specific printer. Essentially, the file looks fine in Illustrator and fine in Photoshop until one significantly raises the white levels. The banding which then appears is very similar to the banding which appears upon printing. Can you see the errors in your file before they're printed? Or, only after printing?
Here's a couple thoughts... save Illustrator file as hi-res PDF. Use CS4 High-Quality Print presets. Open in Photoshop, rasterize at 300dpi in PS's opening dialog box. Flatten and save as TIFF, etc. for printing. May solve the problem.
Another setting to experiment with which may do nothing (and may cause the sky to fall) is to check your presets for Color Settings. Try setting Conversion Options > Intent > to Perceptual. This may make some users howl as Relative Colorimetric is the default setting for many users. However, it's been said to me that Perceptual is the correct setting to avoid banding in images with large gradients.
For more information on the differences between the two, check out: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/color-space-conversion.htm
Regarding the lines around placed images, I haven't dealt with that one. You may want to open the images in Photoshop and make sure there isn't some colored trim left over from the cropping process. Provided that isn't the case, try re-placing them before saving to PDF and moving to Photoshop.
Hope this helps.
Cheers!

Remove banding from gradient light

How the heck can I remove banding from light gradient? I watched over 100 tutorials about this and yet not a single one works for my case!!!!!
I have a light set in dark red color over a solid layer. That creates a color gradient. But it's so blocky that messes up the whole video.
My color depth is 32 bpc.
I tried adding noise 5-10% (result:nothing)
I added some boxing blur (result:nothing)
In preview color seems (not sure about that) to be ok but when saving it into mp4 then Ι get everything messed up.
My output options:
H.264
24 frames
profile: high
level:4
bitrate settings:vbr,1pass
I don't know what to do!! I want a smooth gradient light on the solid layer without all this blocky look! why is it so difficult to have?!
layers:
light & solid layer

Thank you guys but nothing is helpfull.
1. AE 9.0.0
2. whe you ask for specific information then be specific so I can understand. You are the experts but you have to deal with people who don't even know what a pixel is, like me.
3. Adobe Media Encoder CS4? That's a lot of reading there. I don't undersand the 90% of the AE terminology used. Is this AME a program or something? I learned the basics in After Affects by just messsing around with the program, so can you please provide me the very basics of what should I do with AME? I just want to make my video not to get a Phd in AME!!
So I am stuck in the last step "make a movie" .. How the AME will help me? Do I have to set up something there and then to select it from After Effects? I don't even know where to begin!! It's like it's 1000 times more difficult to render the movie than making the movie and the effects :/

Vertical banding in gradient

The printer is telling me there are vertical bands in the gradient on this brochure. I exported the document to a PDF-High Quality (modified) preset;Standard: None;Compatibility: Acrobat 5 (PDF 1.4) (printer's specs).
The color settings:
North America Prepress2;
Working Spaces: R=Adobe RGB, K=US Web Coated (SWOP) v2 with Policies set to: R=Preserve Embedded Profiles; K=Preserve Numbers (Ignore Linked Profiles).
The Transparency Blend Space is RBG.
The color I used to make the gradient has 17% transparency.
HELP! How to get rid of this??
I'm working in InDesign CS4.
Thanks!
Kimberlee

Unless you're printing hundreds, it will be digital. The cost of making plates for color work is high when you go on a press, so you need a lot of copies before that gets absorbed into the per unit cost of the finished product and can compete with the click charges for running the laser printer, which needs no plates and has practically no setup time for each job.
For a job run on my favorite printer's press I usually figure the minimum charge is $1500 (and that would cover any number of impressions up to around 500 copies). As the number of copies increases, the cost for paper, ink, and press time go up, but the very heavy cost of the plates and job setup gets sliced into smaller and smaller chunks until eventually you are paying only pennies per unit (or fractions of a penny). On the other hand, the color copier has a constant cost per page that is I think around $.25 each, whether you print one or one thousand. The setup cost is minimal (I don't know what my guy charges, but where I used to work, we charged $15 per file, and I think that is considered high these days, but it depends a lot on how hard they work on getting the color right).
I just got a quote this afternoon to print 2000 booklets in two colors, 16 pages plus cover, finished size 5.5 x 8.5 after folding and stapling. This is a perfect configuration for the laser printer which can do the finishing inline and spit out a finished booklet that needs no additional handling. It will cost about $3200.00 to run on the press, then trim, fold and stitch, but running it on the copier would be $6000.00. If I add another thousand coppies to the press run it will add perhaps another hundred or two hundred dollars, adding them to the copier run would probably add $2000.00 to $2500.00. On the other hand, if I only needed 50 copies, the digital print price would allow me to consider color where I never would have been able to do it ten years ago.
Peter

Banding of gradients/graphics in CS3

I'm using a G5 Mac OS X (10.4.11) with Photoshop CS3 installed. Program was running fine, then I noticed graphics, especially gradients had severe banding. It also appears in the Photoshop CS3 logo (blue box) that displays when the app is launched. I also have Photoshop CS2 on my station and all graphics look perfect. All other CS3 apps look good. Any idea what this could be?

I have had good luck with having screens replaced under the on-site warranty. The procedure took around an hour on my T420, and I think there may have been some mumbling about how he had to reuse the tape for the wireless antennas. I could be getting that confused with the T400, because I had them both replaced around the same time.
The issue you might have if you try to have it replaced with the on-site warranty is they want to be able to isolate the broken part on the phone before shipping out the replacement parts. I have no idea if what you are seeing is the screen or one of the other components, and the tech on the phone may not either. If they can't isolate, then they often ask you to ship it in.
Are you only getting the Chrome banding with grey, or does it occur with other solid colors?
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Intel iMac displays banding in gradients

I'm not sure if this is a problem with the display or just with certain gradients, but here it is. I set my background to a gradient of about 70% gray at top fading into about 20% gray at bottom. Looking at the screen from a normal viewing distance, I can see horizontal lines or banding in the gradient. I searched for possible solutions, including adding a blur or noise to the gradient, but while I was able to improve it, I still see slight banding in the gradient.
It is not really noticeable in gradients that stretch horizontally, but it is quite noticeable the other way around, though sometimes it's more noticeable than others.
Is this a problem with the display or with the way the gradient was created? I tried switching the color profiles from the default iMac profile to a few others, as well as trying to calibrate the display myself using the display preferences, but the banding did not go away, and I'm unable to find any other potential solutions. Is this a normal problem for iMac displays? Or should I be sending this in for repair/replacement?

I reproduced your situation, and noticed a slight banding as well. I am reminded of an article I read that revealed the use of 6-bit displays on certain MacBook models which don't live up to the claim of being able to display "Millions" of colors.
It would upset me to find out that my 24" iMac's display (not the video card) is incapable of displaying all 16 million or so colors it's supposed to.

Gradient Banding

Over the years, working with Illustrator, I've come to expect that Illustrator just has issues with creating gradients, and the only way to get a good smoothly transitioned gradient is to use Photoshop. I'm really suprised that Adobe hasn't solved this by now. I've been reading posts about gradient banding only in dark shadows, that the banding goes away when printing, or people just trying to say that a particular gradient just can't be recreated due to the limitations of a mathmatically defined gradient. I understand completely that the gradients in Illustrator are mathmatically defined, but essentially, so are the gradients in Photoshop, even if they end up being rendered as a bitmap, correct? I also understand that images can have stepped gradients as a result of either color profile gamuts, or bit depth, however the banding I've run into is not a result of monitor issues, limited color gamut, bit depth, or excessively dark gradients and the banding is in Illustrator, shows up in the exported file (tiff, I've also tried rasterizing the AI file in Photoshop with 16bit bit depth and still got banding) as well as prints, because it's IN the file. Below is a Tiff file that shows a gradient created in Illustrator CS6 on the left, Photoshop in the middle and the original art from Illustrator on the right. You won't be able to see the banding in the file unless you download it and view it at 100%.
So, the question is, is there a workaround in Illustrator, or a alternate way of creating gradients directly in Illustrator that will prevent this banding that I've somehow been missing in the 10 years I've been working with it? Also, Adobe, is anyone there trying to solve this problem?
-Matt

Over the years...I've come to expect that Illustrator just has issues with creating gradients...
And what other vector drawing programs have you used which have no occurrence of gradient banding?
...and the only way to get a good smoothly transitioned gradient is to use Photoshop.
Contrary to popular misconception, raster imaging is not immune to gradient banding. Consider: Everything you view on your monitor is a raster image.
I'm really suprised that Adobe hasn't solved this by now....I understand completely that the gradients in Illustrator are mathmatically defined, but essentially, so are the gradients in Photoshop, even if they end up being rendered as a bitmap, correct?... Also, Adobe, is anyone there trying to solve this problem?
What do you expect Adobe to do about math?
I've been reading posts about gradient banding only in dark shadows, that the banding goes away when printing, or people just trying to say that a particular gradient just can't be recreated due to the limitations of a mathmatically defined gradient.
This has been discussed at length many times in this forum. What part of what you've read do you not understand, or to what specifically do you take exception?
I also understand that images can have stepped gradients as a result of either color profile gamuts, or bit depth, however the banding I've run into is not a result of monitor issues, limited color gamut, bit depth, or excessively dark gradients...
How do you know the banding you're seeing is not a result of any of those issues?
...and the banding is in Illustrator, shows up in the exported file (tiff, I've also tried rasterizing the AI file in Photoshop with 16bit bit depth and still got banding)...
Where are you viewing the Illustrator, TIFF, and Photoshop grads? (On your monitor.)
...as well as prints, because it's IN the file.
It's in what you're viewing (the print). To see if the same banding pattern is in the image file, open the image file, count the bands, and actually measure and compare the pixel color values between the bands.
Below is a Tiff file that shows a gradient created in Illustrator CS6 on the left, Photoshop in the middle and the original art from Illustrator on the right.
No, below is a JPEG assembled from screenshots from your monitor.
You won't be able to see the banding in the file unless you download it and view it at 100%.
You can see the banding at multiple zooms. The bands change because of the resampling that your video system performs when it resamples on the fly when zooming or scaling.
...is there a workaround in Illustrator, or a alternate way of creating gradients directly in Illustrator that will prevent this banding that I've somehow been missing in the 10 years I've been working with it?
There is no workaround that will prevent all banding in all grads in all situations in Illustrator or any other program. So you'll have to be much more methodical and specific in your question if you really want to understand what is going on.
All images have banding, just as all raster images have "jaggies" (square-shaped pixels). The issue in both matters is to make them fine enough to be negligible. Visible "jaggies" is a mathematical conseqence involving the factors of pixel size and halftone dot size. Similarly, visible banding is a mathematical consequence involving the factors of number of tones (for each color channel or separation ink) that an imaging device (monitor or press) can render, and the distances spanned by each possible value step.
When you send a linear grad command to a PostScript device, you are sending a command to vary from color A to color B across distance D in however many steps the device can handle. The device does what it physically can within its hardware limitations. Same is true for your monitor. But the limitations differ between the devices.
So the banding you see on your monitor differs from the banding you will see on your desktop printer and from the banding you will see on film seps and from the banding you will see on press. The specifics depend on the specifics of the artwork and the imaging systems.
Your monitor can display 32 bit color. But how many of those values are available to paint a gradient across a distance depends on how many different colors--and how different they are--to be displayed across how many monitor pixels.
Your desktop printer has a fixed number of printer spots. The printer spots are used to build up halftone dots of varying size. How many different sizes of halftone dots (how many levels of gray) the printer can build is a mathematical function between the number of printer spots and the number of halftone dots available within a given distance. If the differences in adjacent tones (for each color separation involved) is finer than the differences between possible gray levels of the halftone screen, posterization occurs and you see it as bands in a linear grad.
An imagesetter has a greater number of printer spots and can therefore build more different sizes of halftone dots for any given halftone ruling than can your desktop printer. So it is less prone to banding because it is able to render more levels of gray. But it is not immune. You can still exceed its possibilities by demanding finer differences in tone steps than it can reproduce.
Banding is quite often ameleorated in print because (depending on the number of component inks involved in the subject color), the bands occur at different places on each color separation. So the resulting bands in the composite are narrower than on the individual seps, and therefore less evident. The same principle occurs on your desktop printer, but at a courser scale, because it is still a lower resolution device.
Banding is just as likely to occur in mathematically applied linear grads in raster imaging. The rasterization is not deferred to print time, it goes ahead and occurs. But the same principle applies. You are still telling the program to change the values of a fixed number of pixels in 8-bit channels. The result is being displayed on your monitor's array of pixels. When printed, the result is being rendered on the printer's (or film's) array of halftone dots. So the banding quite likely occurs at different locations from where they occur on your monitor. In other words, I don't care what you're doing, your monitor is a poor simulation of the banding that will occur in final print. For one thing, everything you see on your monitor involves three "separations" (RGB), not four.
The myth that raster imaging is somehow magically immune to banding stems from the fact that raster images are very frequently not really linear grads, but scattered dithering patterns (otherwise known as noise). If you use a linear grad tool in a raster image program to paint a linear grad across a broad distance of pixels, you can create banding just as you would in a vector-based program. If you do, then the bands are "nailed down" (rasterization is not deferred to print time) and if the imaging device has sufficient resolution, it will faithfully reproduce that same banding.
Back when raster file size was a much greater issue than it is nowadays, there were 8-bit raster imaging programs (Color It! being one example) which could make beautiful images using only 256 different colors. How did they do it? By effective use of dithering. The differences in adjacent colors were greater than those of a 24-bit image. But they were mixed and scattered so as to simulate additional colors, just as the droplets from an airbrush spraying a single color can result in the perception of multiple tones, just as a halftone screen does the same thing. Well, the nature of raster imaging is like that. Zoom way into what looks like a smoothly graduated sky and you'll see that it is in fact a scattered mixture of different values (noise).
Vector-based grads don't involve noise. They're just mathematical commands sent to the printer's interpreter. If you must, though, you can assign noise as a raster effect to your vector objects, and it can reduce visible banding because what you would really be sending to the printer ultimately is a dithered raster image.
So you just have to use some educated (i.e.; experienced) discernment when creating grads and when interpreting what you see on your monitor. And bear the general rules-of-thumb in mind:
The greater the distance spanned, the fewer component inks involved, the smaller the color change, the lower resolution the imaging device...the greater the likelihood of banding.
Set up some simple tests using simple grads in methodically arranged different values. You can build such a test array on a single page, just as you would build an array of color chips. Print it. Study the results.
JET

Pixelated gradient banding problem

Hi, I've found that Photoshop CS4 has just developed a problem where gradients become pixelated and produce banding like in the image below.
This was produced by making repeated marks in the same place with a brush at 24% opacity.
I've also noticed banding in gradients.
I've been trying to research it and all of this has only just started to occur today, so I don't imagine it has anything to do with my monitor setup (particularly because of the pixelation), which is a commonly suggested answer.
This document setup was 8-bit, RGB Color mode, 72 dpi.
Thanks

Hello.
I just bought a Dell u2410 Ultrasharp verA02 and it's more like UltraBanding. At least I notice the banding much more on this monitor than on my older 19" samsung. In fact I didn't even notice the banding at all on that monitor. Tomorrow I will go back and check it again to make sure.
So are you all sure that it is not a monitor problem and more of a software / bit problem? Because when I switched my painting to 16 bit in Photoshop (CS3) I had the exact same banding problems (I was painting in RGB mode but in a range of gray values). You can see it really heavy on the grays! It's so unbelievably frustrating! Any help other than what has been offered thus far would be greatly appreciated.

Visible banding on gradients

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