Banding and fragmentation of color gradients in Illustration

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
November 24, 2024
2 replies
1753 views

Hi there,
In an old Illustrator CS6 vector, the gradients became banded and fragmented when I opened them in the newer Illustrator. I layered the gradients with the screen blending mode. I used to have no problems with this vector file, but the problem appeared in my new Illustrator (29.1). Can you help me with what the problem could be?

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Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Did you check if it is not a GPU preview problem?

Try if switching between GPU and CPU makes a difference: Cmd E (Mac) or Ctrl E (Win).

satisfied_Lily5E36Author

Participating Frequently

In both cases, it is banded, only the bands change position as I switch.

satisfied_Lily5E36Author

Participating Frequently

And previous CC versions did not have that problem? Or did you go from CS6 to 29.1?

There was no such problem there.

B

Bobby Henderson

Community Expert

Did the AI CS6 artwork have its gradients expanded when opened in AI 29.1? That can be seen pretty obviously if the art is previewed in Outline View. The gradient fill will be a whole bunch of striped lines.

Sometimes when Illustrator artwork is saved down to really early versions gradient fills may be automatically expanded. Some people will save Illustrator artwork to earlier versions in order for the artwork to be opened in other applications.

Another factor that can cause banding in gradients is the fill values of each color stop on the gradient. If there isn't enough variation of colors between the gradient stops banding can occur. For example, a grayscale gradient using only black (K) ink values is more liable to show banding than a grayscale gradient that actually uses all four CMYK inks.

satisfied_Lily5E36Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the answer. The gradient did not expand when opening. The gradient remained editable. Some gradients had opacity masks, but the problem persists even after expanding them. The gradients go from white to black and from gray to black.
The problem is that I have over 100 vectors that were created in CS6 and contain gradients that I want to work with, but so I have to re-create them all if the banding is not resolved. I use black and white gradients in many places for shadows and lighting effects. When I created these vectors, there was no banding.

B

Bobby Henderson

Community Expert

What kinds of ink formulas do the black to white gradients have? Are they only using a single black ink color or are they using CMYK mixtures for the ink values?

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