Poor quality export (Banding)

[Michael24819461q8cb]

I have a photo, taken with a flash, of a very sharp subject and a very dark background. The photo, including the background looks great when viewed in Lightroom. However, the export (jpeg or tiff) has a poor quality background. To be specific, instead of a smooth gradient from light to dark (or dark to less dark), there are consentric rings of monotonal areas. It kind of looks like a topographical map. It's also very pixelated. I'm only seeing this poor quality in the dark background and not the well-lit subject. Also, the poor quality is not seen in the preview image in lightroom. Any help would be appreciated.

[TheDigitalDog]

Can you show us your Export settings used? 

[Rob_Cullen · Accepted solution]

"BANDING".!  Google "Image Banding" and you will get plenty of information.

https://photographylife.com/what-is-color-banding-and-how-to-fix-it

A JPG file is limited to an 8 bit file, meaning it can only contain 256 discreet tones of brightness (compare with 16bit  65,535 range of tones).

Banding created in a JPG file is often more prevalent in large areas where tones are very 'close'. eg. blue skies, or your dark background.

It seems that one way to reduce banding is to add some 'Noise' to the problematic areas.

[Michael24819461q8cb]

Thanks Rob_Cullen. I figured there would be a name for that. Now I know!