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djile
djile
Known Participant
January 3, 2020
Question

Extreme banding in photoshop CC 2020 Windows and macOS

  • January 3, 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 5266 views

Hi All,

This is the second time I've written about this problem, I thought I solved the problem but i didn't.
First of all I want to say, I have tried absolutely everything to solve this problem, and I failed.
- I tried all combinations Prefernces/performance/all combinations - failed
- I tried fresh installs,  windows, updates, drivers, without monitor calibration, and later with monitor calibration - failed 
- I tried windows 7 so it came back to windows 10 again... 
-  I tried with files 16 bits and 8 bits, converted 16 to 8 bits and vice versa... 
This is an example on the Solid color layer to make banding clearer, it is the same when I working with studio image 16 or 8 bits.
So banding appears in photoshop, but when I merge the layers and open in adobe camera raw, the banding disappears...
Therefore, it is more than obvious that some set-up is not good in photoshop so what's the problem?
Once again I have the same problem on windows PC and macbook pro, so the operating system is not a problem, drivers are not a problem, hardware is not a problem,...  (My Windows PC has a 10 bit monitor + radeon RX 580 )

Same problem on 2 operating systems!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uVutnGGf-PxOXmoKFN8PniDo6-Bzercf 
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ea1el5V3ei8WJFAJ0O-VpZ6pgGaxeiJS 
https://drive.google.com/open?id=14mEs9g1g4oFCMyHDykmhIDYdQLcV_RaI 




This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

G
Gmanpiccy
Participant
November 13, 2024

Hi,

 

I have taken a series of night frames with my Nikon Z8 and some dark bias frames. In photoshop with 30 of those frames loaded as layers I change the blend mode to lighten and then flattening the image I can see strange ellpitical banding. I can only see the banding in photoshop after I flatten it or try to save it as jpeg etc. If I reduce the resolusion of the image from 8256 to 5000 pixels I can barely see the banding after flattening it. I then looked at my dark bias RAW frames (shots to find hot pixels taken at the same ISO, aperture & shutter with the lens cap on so no light can enter to reveal hot pixels) I can reaveal the banding by pushing the exposure up by 5 stops. I can't see the banding in Nikon NX software or if I export the dark frames as DNG's from lightroom so it appears that there is some feature in Lightroom/Photoshop causing it. I would be very grateful for help with this issue. 

Thx

Gareth

silk-m
Community Expert
silk-mCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 4, 2020

Hi,

I can display 10bit in the following environment.

Photoshop ver. 21.0.2

macOS Catalina 10.15.2
Mac mini (2018) 3 GHz 6-Core i5
Monitor EIZO CS2730 + ColorNavigator 7.0.8.3

Intel UHD Graphics 630:

  •   Chipset Model: Intel UHD Graphics 630
  •   Type: GPU
  •   Bus: Built-In
  •   VRAM (Dynamic, Max): 1536 MB
  •   Vendor: Intel
  •   Device ID: 0x3e9b
  •   Revision ID: 0x0000
  •   Metal: Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily2 v1

  Displays: CS2730:

  •   Resolution: 2560 x 1440 (QHD/WQHD - Wide Quad High Definition)
  •   UI Looks like: 2560 x 1440
  •   Framebuffer Depth: 30-Bit Color (ARGB2101010)
  •   Main Display: Yes
  •   Mirror: Off
  •   Online: Yes
  •   Rotation: Supported
  •   Automatically Adjust Brightness: No
  •   Connection Type: DisplayPort

 

I turned on and off the 30 Bit Display and took screenshots.


And apply the following tone curve to that 8bit screenshot.

30 Bit Display is OFF

30 Bit Display is ON

From this result, I think 30 bit display is possible.

--Susumu Iwasaki
D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 4, 2020

In that case it has to be somehow run by the Metal framework in MacOS, not by the Intel GPU driver which does not support 30 bits. Intel GPUs have never, ever, supported 30 bit display. But perhaps this is why the video driver is integrated into MacOS, as opposed to a discrete and separate component as in Windows.

 

On Windows the requirement is strictly Radeon Pro, or nVidia Quadro. Recently, nVidia started to offer a "studio" branch of drivers for GeForce cards, which also supports OpenGL 30 bit color. I don't know how reliably that works, but on Quadro cards it's rock solid.

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 3, 2020

With an 8-bit display pipeline there will always be banding in a narrow gradient like this. You many have a 10-bit capable monitor - but you also need a 10-bit capable video card, i.e. a Radeon Pro series card.

 

In addition you need to view at 66.67% zoom ratio or higher. At lower zoom ratios Photoshop uses 8 bit previews.

 

ACR/Lightroom use dithering to conceal banding, so you won't see it there. This led many people to believe it supports 10 bits, but it doesn't.

 

10 bit display works perfectly on both my Windows systems, both with NVidia Quadros. But it was a while before I discovered that it has to be enabled in the driver. I assume it is the same with Radeon Pros.

djile
djileAuthor
Known Participant
January 3, 2020

Thanks for your reply but,
100% zoom

and? 🙂 and yes,  my graphic supports 10 bit

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 3, 2020

Is it a Radeon Pro series card? And you are using DisplayPort, not DVI or HDMI?

 

Note that Photoshop specifically requires OpenGL 10 bit support. Not to be confused with DirectX 10 bit support, which almost all cards already have out of the box. Photoshop doesn't use that (that's mostly for games).

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