Is it really impossible to have gradient without banding?
Question
I am struggling to create a gradient without banding. I have watched all the videos on YT and tried: Bluring all kinds, Noise, Dither,bit depth, Brush and doing the gradient in Illustrator.
Everything fails and I can always see the banding.
The background color I use behind the image: 050b3c
Accepted Answer
Noise and dither usually yield quite good results. There's a couple of things that may make “banding†more apparent:
- “start†and “stop†colors
- gradient size (banding becomes more apparent when “start†and “stop†points are getting farther from each other—gradient have to be “projected†on more samples with the constant number of available brightness values),
- miscallibrated/poor quality monitor (have you tried to view your gradients on different monitors?),
- reduced “per-channel†color resolution in system settings (seems unlikely nowadays since most systems use 32 bps settings, but still a possibility),
- “wild†video card gamma settings (e.g. in “video card control panel†or gamme loader like Adobe Gamma Loader),
- too “agressive†monitor profile (again view-on-other-monitors test should provide some hints about it),
- reduced bit depth of an image.
Also it would be useful to know what your target device is. There's a difference how much you can “spread†your gradient whether you're targeting print (what kind of print also matters e.g.: screens like AM, pseudo-stochastic, stochastic) computer monitors or mobile devices displays. It also makes difference then wether you use raster graphics or vector graphics.
Bottom line is: this is quite complex subject :).