Gradient… rings instead of smooth transition?

WS
Posted By
Woody_Selick
Jul 18, 2006
Views
2904
Replies
17
Status
Closed
Hey all,
I’m using a gradient fill but instead of a smooth transition between colors, I get rings. As if the bit depth wasn’t right or something. My monitor is set to 32bits color and I’m working on an RGB doc in photoshop. anyone know how to fix this? thanks a bunch!
Related Tags
gradient smooth transition

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P
Phosphor
Jul 18, 2006
Show us a screen shot of your Gradient Editor.
WS
Woody_Selick
Jul 18, 2006
k, I’ll have to do it tomorrow morning… I won’t have access to the doc until then… 🙂
H
Ho
Jul 19, 2006
LCD monitor, by chance?
P
Phosphor
Jul 19, 2006
"LCD monitor"

Jeebus, I HATE them.

(Excuse me, but I’ll jump at any chance to express that opinion. XD)
WS
Woody_Selick
Jul 19, 2006
yeah it’s an LCD… does that have such an effect?
BL
Bob Levine
Jul 19, 2006
Any monitor incorrectly set can have that effect. Right click on the desktop and choose properties. From there click on the settings tab. What is the color quality and the screen resolution set to?

What is the native resolution of the monitor?

Bob
L
LenHewitt
Jul 19, 2006
Woody,

Just add noise at 1 or 2px to the gradient. You can get banding when the change across the gradient is insufficient for the area it covers. Addition of a little noise will smooth it out.
H
Ho
Jul 19, 2006
yeah it’s an LCD… does that have such an effect?

Some LCDs are prone to banding, showing abrupt transitions where there really aren’t any. Sometimes this can be corrected by investing in a color calibration package (Eye-1, Spyder Pro), sometimes you just need a better monitor.

Post a 100% crop of a screen shot or make a file available for download that the rest of us can look at. We’ll tell you if it’s your file or your monitor.
WS
Woody_Selick
Jul 19, 2006
You know… when I went to export as jpeg for the web, the bands became signficantly harder to see. But here is what it looks like…

<http://www.thepixelsink.com/other/test.jpg>

What are ya guys seeing? the bands are very subtle now on my monitor.
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Jul 19, 2006
A very definite line, slightly curved at the bottom. Is that what you are seeing?

Something I do if ai suspect actual banding is to open Info and move the cursor over the change point. An abrupt change that is replicateable at several different spots on the change line would confirm it’s true existance.

Frankly, I have never had a situation where the banding I was seeing didn’t also print.
L
LenHewitt
Jul 19, 2006
I’m seeing no banding here at all, Woody. Just the ‘horizon line’.
TD
Thee_DarkOverLord
Jul 19, 2006
I see the same as LEN
RK
Rob_Keijzer
Jul 19, 2006
I see rings on my CRT, subtile, but they’re there. with a distinct lighter circle at the centre.

I use Firefox, if that matters.

Rob
WS
Woody_Selick
Jul 19, 2006
sorry guys, there IS a horizon line. That isn’t the problem… yeah, it’s the central gradient circle there. You have to look closely because it’s been scaled down. But does anyone other than Rob see the lines? Here is a clipping from the original full-size image…

<http://www.thepixelsink.com/other/test2.jpg>
H
Ho
Jul 19, 2006
I can see it on my POS work monitor. Do you have Dither checked in the Gradient tool options? If so, a bit of noise as Len suggested should do the trick. And whatever you do, don’t use Gaussian Blur—it just makes banding worse.

Here is a test, done with your colors, with Dither checked: < http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1VesujHj6KdNXNEulQ hp48v8EoskMo> How does it look on your end?

EDIT: I can see faint rings in the Pixental display, but not in Photoshop where I did the new test file.
WS
Woody_Selick
Jul 19, 2006
oh, that looks good on my screen. I tried the dither option though and not much happened. it still looks, well, crappy. haha I’ve got very obvious rings.
WS
Woody_Selick
Jul 19, 2006
when I opened the full-size image (of the one you’ve got psoted there), the rings were very obvious. Maybe it’s just my monitor then? I’ve got a dual-monitor config at home, one lcd, one very nice NEC crt… let me play around and report back. this is interesting

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