: Bandings on shadows and gradients I have a small project where the background needs gradient. I was using Phosothop CS5.1 but decided to upgrade to CS6 because it had the dither feature After

@Hamaas979

Photoshop's 16-bit mode does not actually display more colors on screen. It uses 16-bit values internally, but shows a 8-bit preview and also 8-bit color pickers. So it creates the impression that you're trying to blend a color difference of 9 RGB units (28/28/28 to 36/36/36) over a distance of 720px. I'm not sure if PS CS5.1 handles this differently. Three options:


Add noise to the background: Add a layer just above the background layer, fill it with 50% gray, set blending to overlay. Now use Filter > Noise > Add Noiseand add some monochrome gaussian noise (~3%). This should be ok even when saving back to 8-bit mode.
As the gradient here is so minimal, you could leave it off and keep the background as a solid color. On most displays you'll not be able to see a difference anyway.
Increase the difference of the colors you want to blend until it looks smooth enough.


Interesting article about the topic: nomorebanding.com/cache
Update 2015-12-09:

Working directly in 8-Bit Mode would probably be the best advice here. The dithering of the layer's Blending Options > Gradient will actually look much better instantaneously and without any additional efforts.

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