Banding with almost every tool that creates gradients

[lord darkul]

Is there a way to circumvent banding when creating fine gradients?
I know there is the "solution" with adding a touch of grain or noise to those areas but that is really just a dirty workaround.

For example using the vignetting tool. If I want to create a dark vignette on a relatively dark image I always see heavy banding. Also with the curves tool and every other tool which can create soft transitions. I'm in 16bit RGB-mode, sRGB 2.1, and my monitor is not the issue.

Maybe there could be a live filter to discover and eradicate those areas automatically.

[fde101]

 

You might want to review these:

 

[lord darkul]

Thank you fde101, I'll check them out

[lord darkul]

Ok, just tried a few settings with a gradient and - very important - other tools which generate gradients (for example a vignette).

Dithering, if turned on in settings of Affinity Photo is working for at least linear gradients. The "dithering" which I call noise addition - nothing more - is applied and you see no banding but grain. This noise addition works on all banding types I saw in my creations.

But ...
f.e. on a vignette which has to create some kind of gradient or a radial (or any) mask on a relatively dark background there is no dithering added. You can see the banding in RGB/16. It has nothing to do with the export at first. If I see banding in my layers I have to get rid of them beforehand, before I try to export. The only way is with adding noise to those areas.

Edited May 24, 2023 by lord darkul

[Alex_M]

I have the same problem. Any update on this? My monitor is Eizo CS2420 which, from what I've read, supports the display of gradients without banding. I can see that the gradients are mostly smooth in the final 16-bit exports, but when I'm editing in 16-bits inside Affinity Photo they have banding.

[NotMyFault]

9 hours ago, Alex_M said:

I have the same problem. Any update on this? My monitor is Eizo CS2420 which, from what I've read, supports the display of gradients without banding. I can see that the gradients are mostly smooth in the final 16-bit exports, but when I'm editing in 16-bits inside Affinity Photo they have banding.

Affinity is unfortunately unable to render more than 8 bit colors for 16 bit documents, probably for performance reasons. You need to export and use a  different app to see the file. 

i filed a bug report long time ago, but don’t expect this will be solved at all, because a major refactoring of the rendering engine would be required.

As a workaround:

use export persona, export as PNG or TIFF, activate continuous export.

use e.g. Apple Preview or other capable apps to inspect exports after making changes.

Affinity apps can render 32 bit documents correctly, but converting to RGB/32 has many drawbacks ruling it out as workaround