[Grant F]

A question for slightly more experienced matte painters:

How do you tackle the issues of banding (in skies or anywhere with subtle gradients) caused by Photoshop's 8 bit limitations?

Is there some sort of plug in that allows you to create/edit 16bit images (Photoshop currently allows you to open and edit existing pixel information but not create/paint new images.)

I've found Satori FilmFX which allows the creation of 64bit images but it has its own set of limitations.

Given a lot of matte painting work is done in Photoshop, is there a simple answer?

[Loki]

banding in 8-bit space is a pain in the butt. Especially since it's sometimes overlooked until it screams from the screen when projected.

Three things I do to detect & get rid of mach banding:

* I create an adjustment layer that has a high-contrast color-correction, that is ajusted to the value-range of the gradient. That helps seeing banding. I use this layer for viewing purposes only. I leave it on top and switch it on from time to time to check.

* When I've got a smooth gradient, like a sky, I usually let a carefully adjusted gaussian blur over it and then:

* I use the 'spatter' filter to dither the gradient. It's sometimes a little bit tricky, but it works really nicely and blows the banding apart.

Also look in the dark areas of your image (the lowest 10%), to find crap that'll show up when it's filmed out.

Also - when outputting on film, never use 100% white, since it'll punch 'holes' when being filmed out on certain recorders - I'd go up to rgb values like 245-250 to be safe.

This happens quite often when you have lightsources with a glow around it - when the brightest spot has 100% the transition to the rest of the glow-gradient is not smooth, but has a noticeable step/banding inbetween.

well - hope that helps ...

Loki

[spooge demon]

Thanks for the tips, Loki, hehe...

[Danny]

Not that I'm a matte painter or anything like that, but I do encounter banding a lot of times in the high res work I'm doing.
One thing you've got to be very carefull of is the use of image adjustment menus that deal with colour and value changes. They are able to introduce banding in even the most smoothed out gradients. Like Loki pointed out, be very aware of this also in your dark areas as these are very easily overlooked. Especially if the ambient light in your room is somewhat high.
A gaussian blur can indeed get rid of certain banding in certain occasions. But do be carefull with this as wrong settings can trigger other annoying artifacts.
I've also found that banding can be nicely eliminated with the add noise filters. Be sure to set it to monochrome noise if you don't like confetti. Play around with the settings and diffirent types of noise to get a decent result.
Hey Loki, what the heck is the spatter filter?? Some kind of alien Mac-only filter or what?

Danny

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[Ko]

The spatter filter is located under the Brush Strokes filters....

Ko

[Danny]

Doh.. shows how much I use filters..

Thanks Ko!

Danny


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