Fix Banding in Gradients by Turning On a Photoshop Setting (VIDEO)

Have you ever noticed ugly banding artifacts in the gradients you create in Photoshop? Well, here’s the good news: There’s a quick Photoshop fix that you’ll learn in the four-minute tutorial below from the globally popular PIXimperfect YouTube channel.

Instructor Unmesh Dinda is perhaps the world’s most popular image-editing instructor, with almost five million subscribers to his channel. He’s known for simple solutions to common processing problems, and this one is about as quick and easy as it gets.

In today’s episode Dinda explains a “hidden setting” in Photoshop that will help you avoid banding when creating a Gradient Fill layer or using the Gradient tool. He explains how to turn on the special setting, and then demonstrates two techniques that, when used in combination, make banding a thing of the past.

Dinda notes that unsightly banding in gradients isn’t always obvious until you zoom in on a photo, at which point it smacks you in the face. And if you make large prints it’s right there for everyone to see. The lesson begins with Dinda selecting the Gradient tool on the left side of the screen and creating a simple gradient to demonstrate the problem and solution.

To make the banding easier to discern, Dinda then opens the Curves tool, moves the left slider to the right, and the right slider to the left. This increases contrast, and there you have it: really hard banding. So how do you avoid it?

First, go to the top of the screen, select Mode, and change the option in the dropdown menu from 8-bits to 16 bits per channel. The banding still appears because it’s “burned in” the pixels. But now go back to the Gradient too and create the gradient again. Surprise: the banding is gone!

Keep in mind that if you’re working with JPEGS they can only be saved as 8-bit files. As you may suspect, Dinda has a solution for that too, using the magic of the Dither tool at the top of the screen. As he explains, “what Dither does is that it introduces a noisy blend between colors.” Take a look at his before/after images to see how this works.

Dinda provides a couple other tricks for making this technique work to perfection. By following his simple tips, you can forever forget about banding in gradients, and move on the to next problem you encounter.

And when it comes to simple solutions to whatever stumps you next, there’s no better solution than visiting Dinda’s comprehensive YouTube channel.

We also suggest you watch the tutorial we posted recently from another expert, explaining several pro editing tips that will change your processing workflow in Photoshop and Lightroom.