Gradient banding in PS, but not in LR

[silk1975]

hi everyone !

I see a lot of topics about banding, with screen displaying only 8 bits images and so on.

But there is one thing i dont understand. Those banding happen only in Photoshop, and not in Lightroom for the same image !

When i import my raw files in LR, they look ok without banding, but when i send them from Lightroom into Photoshop for some advanced editing (in TIFF format) my gradients suffer from banding. When i save my image and go back to LR for some final touch, the images have no more banding !!!

I dont understand what happens... Same raw materiel, same image all along my workflow, same monitor... but different render in Photoshop !

How can it be ? 😞

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

Lightroom uses dithering to display the images. Photoshop can do that for 8-bit images (there's a checkbox in color settings) - but not for 16 bit images.

In addition, a photograph will usually have just enough noise to break up banding. That's very different from a synthetic gradient in Photoshop. So it's normally not a big problem in Lightroom.

And yes - as long as you're working with 16 bit data, any banding you see is in your display system.

The only way to eliminate it completely is to invest in a 10 bit capable monitor/video card.

EDIT: Photoshop supports 10 bit display, but Lightroom doesn't. Because of the Lr dithering some people misunderstood that. But to be clear - 10 bit display is Photoshop only.

[CoryShubert]

@D Fosse  is correct. Let us know if this answers your question or if you have any other issues with this.