I don't get this, and it is REALLY frustrating. After a reinstall of windows xp, I decided to try out Photoshop CS4. My problem is that I keep getting these banding effects, no matter what I do. Like when I do gaussian blur, it looks really ugly instead of smooth as it should. And when I try to create a smooth gradient, it too looks extremly bad. I read somewhere that it could be because of tft monitor, but that doesnt make sense, cause it can display gradients I have made before. And graphics in applications and on web look just fine.
I have made sure that the Color quality in windows is set to highest (32 bit). I have tried to go to Color Management in my Display settings, and tried to load both the sRGB one, the Adobe RGB 1998 and one that was installed with my monitor driver. In Photoshop I have tried both 8 bit, 16 bit and 32 bit images. I have tried with Edit\Color Settings and set the Working space to both sRGB and Adobe RGB. Still happens.
But it gets weirder. Although in a sense maybe not. But I still don't get why that happens. Thing is, when I create a new empty blank image, and then make a simple, linear, black to white gradient over it, the histogram looks all weird. Tried to attach a screenshot of what it looks like. Its not supposed to be like this is it?? Is there some settings that are messed up? Is it an issue with Photoshop CS4? My display drivers? Graphics card? What can it be? It wasn't like this before with CS3, before I reinstalled windows.
Could someone please shed some light on this, cause I just don't get it
To describe the problem better I created new 640x480x72 image in 16-bit RGB color mode. Using the Adobe RGB color profile and square pixels. I have then chosen default background and foreground color, taken the Gradient tool (linear, foreground to background, normal mode, 100%, etc. Tried to turn both on and off dithering, but gave pretty much same result) and drawn a gradient from top to bottom. And the result is just ugly... And when you look at the Histogram, it has all these spikes, and it looks really weird. I mean, shouldn't it look kind of smooth? Looks pretty much the same in both 8bit and 16bit. Uploaded the image so you can see it here:
I have made sure that the Color quality in windows is set to highest (32 bit). I have tried to go to Color Management in my Display settings, and tried to load both the sRGB one, the Adobe RGB 1998 and one that was installed with my monitor driver. In Photoshop I have tried both 8 bit, 16 bit and 32 bit images. I have tried with Edit\Color Settings and set the Working space to both sRGB and Adobe RGB. Still happens.
But it gets weirder. Although in a sense maybe not. But I still don't get why that happens. Thing is, when I create a new empty blank image, and then make a simple, linear, black to white gradient over it, the histogram looks all weird. Tried to attach a screenshot of what it looks like. Its not supposed to be like this is it?? Is there some settings that are messed up? Is it an issue with Photoshop CS4? My display drivers? Graphics card? What can it be? It wasn't like this before with CS3, before I reinstalled windows.
Could someone please shed some light on this, cause I just don't get it
To describe the problem better I created new 640x480x72 image in 16-bit RGB color mode. Using the Adobe RGB color profile and square pixels. I have then chosen default background and foreground color, taken the Gradient tool (linear, foreground to background, normal mode, 100%, etc. Tried to turn both on and off dithering, but gave pretty much same result) and drawn a gradient from top to bottom. And the result is just ugly... And when you look at the Histogram, it has all these spikes, and it looks really weird. I mean, shouldn't it look kind of smooth? Looks pretty much the same in both 8bit and 16bit. Uploaded the image so you can see it here: