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Hello, I created a background with a gradient in Affinity Photo. In the doc and when exported, I and someone on a separate computer I shared the image to can also see the banding on the image. I tried: exporting as a JPEG, PNG, PNG-8, and converting the file format to RGB/16 and RGB/32 (HDR). RGB/16 seemed to smooth the image more but there were still bands in the image. I also tried remaking the background in RGB/32 but the background did not turn out.

The image is 1920 x 1080 300 DPI

How can I remove the bands or export the image without the bands?

Three White Walls Background.jpg

Convert.JPG

Preferences.JPG

Edited by Schmu
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First, 300ppi is completely irrelevant. It means nothing for screen work. Only the actual resolution counts, which is 1920x1080.

Your gradient blends from a dark grey (56,56,56) to black. That means only 56 shades of grey, and there just aren't enough values in 8bit and on most screens to create a smooth blend at that 1920x1080 resolution. That is a hard technical limitation. The second problem is JPG, since it may worsen the issue due to artefacting.

Anyway, the solution is to add some noise, and then export the result. I tested this with your gradient, and introduced a 4% noise, and the visual banding disappears when saved as PNG file (which is lossless). A jpg version needs to be saved at quite a high quality, otherwise the lossy compression will still cause apparent visual issues.

I recreated your gradient in Photo, and applied a live Gaussian noise of 4%. Then exported it.

It is extremely frustrating in cases like these that Affinity Photo does not provide us with a preview of the exported result, because it results in trial and error, forcing the user to depend on saving, checking, saving again, checking, and so on. Let's hope the developers will soon add a preview option to the export persona. It took me four tries before I arrived at an acceptable JPG compression quality, while in PhotoLine I just adjust the quality slider until satisfied.

PS the reason it looks okay in Photo is because Photo adds dithering/noise when the gradient is displayed.

Untitled.thumb.jpg.846971c6d3a9e223b42fd68b9f128454.jpg

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