Sometimes when I clean up an area, either by using NeatImage or perhaps a gaussian or other type of blur, I get bands or patterns that appear like a topographic map. Is there any way to avoid this?
I get the banding effect when Im looking at a large image in a tiny space. If you zoom to full size, the banding should go away. Its when the camera/computer shoves a lot of pixels into the smaller areas that tend to create that for me.
Sometimes when I clean up an area, either by using NeatImage or perhaps a gaussian or other type of blur, I get bands or patterns that appear like a topographic map. Is there any way to avoid this?
I read somewhere that if you start with RAW and do everything in 16 bit you'll have less banding. I just bought the 16 bit version of NI and so far I've had very good results without the banding. I haven't tried a 16 vs 8 bit comparison though.
Banding is more commonly a result of supersaturation. The NeatImage or gaussian is probably just making it more apparent (although that sounds a little off to me, I have used gaussain to actually reduce banding.
Try lowering your saturation and see if the problem goes away.
Another common cause of (apparent) banding is when the monitor settings get switched, say from millions of colors to thousands or 256 colors -- that's also one reason it shows up so often in GIF images.
What seems to be happening is that NI or blurring is creating a *very* smooth area of color that nonetheless has a gentle gradient. What you're seeing is "posterization" due to the very slow, continuous change in tone.
Do check monitor settings as GeneralE suggested, that's a first step. Oversaturation will make this appear worse. Also, significant curves adjustments that stretch the histogram in that tonal range can contribute. An example is boosting the contrast of a shot considerably.
Try not to elminate *all* noise from a solid color area, but leave just a little residual noise to provde some "dither" to color in the area.
Nearly everyone experiences this from time to time. Hopefully the above will help you avoid it as much as possible.
