Sijun Forums :: View topic - Photoshop gradients and color picker not smooth

Splatt · Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2001 7:18 am

The color picker in photoshop has suddenly started to look like I am in 16 bit mode, so some images with gradients look bad(not smooth and have visable banding), some shades of color look darker than they really are. I have installed the latest gfx drivers and re installed photoshop but this does not seem to help.

I have recently installed windows XP and a new ge force 2 card and I think this may be the cause of the problem. I am in 32 bit mode and changing to 16bit makes the color picker look even worse than before.

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this? Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this kind of post but this problem is driving me mad.

Frost · Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2001 10:36 am

Looks fine here with the same config. It's definitely an odd problem. How do gradients appear outside photoshop, or even in images inside photoshop (color picker aside)?

xXxPZxXx · Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2001 11:47 am

dum dum dee dum. I think this is the exact same thing that happened to me. Maybe...

so try going to the color picker, when you get to picking your colors and the colors are all goofy looking down on the bottom left uncheck "use only web colors

it took me forever to figure that one out. Sorry if that doesn't fix the problem!

-PZ-

Splatt · Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2001 1:09 pm

It looks fine outside PS thankfully, inside any image may have a banding effect if there are lots of close colors. This shown clearly when using gradients :

Inside Photoshop
Outside Photoshop

Photoshop acts like its in 16 bit mode when windows is set to 32 bit. It isn't the web only colors thing, the change is a bit more subtle than that

[ December 30, 2001: Message edited by: Splatt ]

Frost · Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2001 3:38 pm

I'm tempted to say it must be because of some internal gamma ramp correction in PS. Try messing/disabling some stuff in your Color Settings... otherwise, I can't see what would cause this. It's not 16 bit, that's for sure. Good luck.

tyron · Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2001 3:55 pm

i've had this problem too.. and i've solved it, but i never knew how. i never payed much attention to it since i hardly ever use ps.
but please let me know what the solution is when you find it.

Novacaptain · Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2002 2:11 pm

Photoshop 4 had very ugly gradients, in my opinion. There are some options in PS 5/6 that will simulate the behavour of PS4. Since I don't remember exactly how to set them i usually just reset my preferences whenever something like this happens here's how:

To restore all preferences to their default settings:

In Windows, press and hold Alt+Control+Shift immediately after launching Photoshop or ImageReady. Click Yes to (Photoshop) delete the Adobe Photoshop settings file or (ImageReady) erase all ImageReady preferences.

In Mac OS, do one of the following:

Hold down the Shift, Option, and Command keys at the startup of Photoshop to reset preferences to their default settings.
Open the Preferences folder in the System Folder, and drag the following files to the Trash: (Photoshop) Adobe Save For Web 2.0 prefs, and, located in the Adobe Photoshop 6 Settings folder, Adobe Photoshop 6 Prefs, Actions Palette (prefs), Color Settings (prefs), Contours.psp, Custom Shape.psp, Patterns.psp, Shape Curves.psp, and Styles.psp; (ImageReady) Adobe ImageReady 3.0 Prefs.

New Preferences files will be created the next time you start Photoshop or ImageReady

From the Adobe photoshop help file.

Doing this will, of course, remove all your personalized settings regarding brushes, windows, etc, etc...