affinity designer Tin Toy, Rocket Racer (AD, finished)

[ronnyb]

On 1/24/2019 at 10:26 AM, VectorVonDoom said:

That's what I was thinking, an 8 bit document hasn't 16 bits of data to export. But I'm no expert in image formats and conversions so it might not be that simple. Anyway, 16 bit everything and AdobeRGB is a definite improvement. Creates huge output files of course. I was going to upload the new corner but when I did the banding was back when viewed here, so perhaps it's partly a web/browser problem.

First of all incredible work!

Not sure of you're aware of this, but you can assign a Noise value to your colors in AD/AP. In the color picker, if you click on the circle next to the Opacity slider, it will change to Noise, and you can add a setting from 1-100. This ought to help with banding in gradients. I don't know why they bury this option in the UI, I've mentioned it before but I suppose they have more pressing issues to remedy. In any case, give it a try and see if your gradients don't blend any better. Hope it helps.

[VectorVonDoom]

I did but thank you. Instead of doing it that way I've been using the film grain filter in Nik Color Efex Pro, you have more control that way. But I think eventually I did arrive at a way to get rid of most if not all banding. Just putting noise/film grain on 8bit sRGB didn't hide it well enough in some cases.

[SrPx]

Why using sRGB ?

Is a quite smaller range...

I mean... for such high detail work, and this kind of thing... I'd work in the highest and the best,  the more time possible. Use sRGB, CMYK, and even 8 bits for a very final step. Even more the case JPG format. All of these mean some sort of quality reduction (JPG very specially, it can add tons of artifacts)

I mean, I'd work in 16 bits, Adobe RGB ( I know there are others, but this one has a good ratio of color space and compatibility with other applications). Once the piece is finished, if needed, I export to  sRGB, for example, for showing in the web with the peace of mind of it looking well in most platforms. But as a last step ! 5 seconds before a final export, only, is when I'd move to sRGB. And if your machine allows it, for this kind of work I would not move from 16 bits. Not downwards, at least. (again, surely yep to 8 bits, sRGB but only at export time. If I get my workflow with whatever the tools to allow a dithered conversion).

Even way much more the case for CMYK, where a ton of these gradients will see banding unless done the conversion with dithering. But if needing to print a work like this in offset, man, I'd really make an study on how to export this well in a CMYK file, with the profile, level of ink, etc requested by whatever the print company. Heavy editing to get it right, surely.

I'd never ever use a JPG as an intermediate step while editing. Not even close to the end. Heck, I don't even use JPG as a final export unless strongly requested, or... for my portfolio site. And often trash it and use instead a lovely PNG.(after all, the site pics are small graphics).

But I keep thinking in raster... Still , a lot of stuff surely applies....

And is just ...opinions.
 

[VectorVonDoom]

I am now using AdobeRGB 16bit colour. Just makes for big, slower files. For my my stuff I don't save to JPG, just TIFF, but would think TIFF's would be a bit large for posting here. Plus they're shrunk down so much a JPG does OK.

For other people I guess it also depends if they have a 100% or close AdobeRGB monitor/display. 100% sRGB is very common Adobe not so much.