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Colour banding is a subtle form of
Dynamic range 24 vs 36 bit
Computer graphics Computer graphic artifacts Visual artifacts {{computer-stub
Colour banding is a subtle form of posterization
Posterization or posterisation of an image is the conversion of a continuous gradation of tone to several regions of fewer tones, causing abrupt changes from one tone to another. This was originally done with photographic processes to create p ...
in digital images, caused by the colour of each pixel being rounded to the nearest of the digital colour levels. While posterization is often done for artistic effect, colour banding is an undesired artifact. In 24-bit colour modes, 8 bits per channel is usually considered sufficient to render images in Rec. 709 or sRGB
sRGB is a standard RGB (red, green, blue) color space that HP and Microsoft created cooperatively in 1996 to use on monitors, printers, and the World Wide Web. It was subsequently standardized by the International Electrotechnical Commission ...
. However the eye can see the difference between the colour levels, especially when there is a sharp border between two large areas of adjacent color levels. This will happen with gradual gradient
In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gr ...
s (like sunsets, dawns or clear blue skies), and also when blurring an image a large amount.
Colour banding is more noticeable with fewer bits per pixel
Color depth or colour depth (see spelling differences), also known as bit depth, is either the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel, or the number of bits used for each color component of a single pixel. When referring to ...
(BPP) at 16–256 colours (4–8 BPP), where there are fewer shades with a larger difference between them.
Possible solutions include the introduction of dithering
Dither is an intentionally applied form of noise used to randomize quantization error, preventing large-scale patterns such as color banding in images. Dither is routinely used in processing of both digital audio and video data, and is often ...
and increasing the number of bits per colour channel.
Because the banding comes from limitations in the presentation of the image, blurring the image does ''not'' fix this.
See also
*Posterization
Posterization or posterisation of an image is the conversion of a continuous gradation of tone to several regions of fewer tones, causing abrupt changes from one tone to another. This was originally done with photographic processes to create p ...
* Quantization (signal processing)
Quantization, in mathematics and digital signal processing, is the process of mapping input values from a large set (often a continuous set) to output values in a (countable) smaller set, often with a finite number of elements. Rounding and ...
External links
Dynamic range 24 vs 36 bit
Computer graphics Computer graphic artifacts Visual artifacts {{computer-stub