Banding/Posterization of Sky
Image shot in RAW and banding is noticeable before any edits. Did I screw up the Exposure? I tried increasing white and brightness, in hopes of washing out any color changes in the sky. I tried lowering clarity. Or maybe it is not banding at all, but a cloud formation? If so, any ideas of how to blur it together a bit?
It is coming through clearly in print and looks like a bad edit.
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Are you sure you're seeing posterization or is this layers of clouds that lead to a periodic gradient in the sky? FYI, I see a bunch of dirt from the sensor in the sky.
True posterization is usually caused by over processing (stretching a very fine range or color/luminosity in a fairly uniform part of the scene into more tonal or color values than it originally was. If that's the desired outcome, then you can lessen it's effect in a sky by purposely adding noise.
I've never seen posterization happen straight from a RAW that was recorded in at least 12 bits (on a good screen) unless significant post processing causes it to be visible. Then, it's more a product of the post processing than a fault of the original image capture or the tools. Posterization can be seen very easily on a low-end monitor that doesn't display enough levels of luminosity or enough colors (I have a very cheap second monitor that regularly shows posterization just due to the limitations of the monitor). I don't use that monitor for anything related to my photo processing.
Banding can be something that happens in certain conditions with how the data is read from a sensor. It is also not typically visible in normal exposure shots, but can become more visible when a shot is "pushed" a lot (like significantly underexposed and then exposure raised in post processing).
Can you make the RAW image available for download somewhere so people can see what that data looks like.
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I see a bit of what might look like banding in the sky on the left side of the picture. if you think you see banding before making any edits, is that only when you look at the preview at the zoom to fit level? If you zoom in to 100%, so that Capture One is forced to re-render from the raw, not just its preview, do you still see this?
Ian
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Thanks for the feedback. I can still still see the "banding" when the viewer is zoomed to 100%
What is a good way to share the RAW file?0 -
I suppose you'd have to put it on a cloud service somewhere and post a link.
Ian
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