[zdeneczech]

Hi, after importing dng file into Camera raw 7, working on it, then clicking on - Open image - transporting image to Photoshop to convert it into JPEG file ( the sky still looks good), then I close and save the file into My pictures. But when I open the file (with XNview), the sky looks terrible, not sure what the correct English term is, perhaps fringing, so I am including an example. Please advise how to avoid this, thank you Danny.

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[JohnX]

Can't help you with an explanation, but I'd call this 'bandling', assuming we're talking about the strange effect in the sky?

Is it definitely the case that it appears only after pp and wasn't some strange natural phenomena that you were lucky/unlucky enough to capture?

[StephenHampshire]

Posterisation is the correct term i beleive. instead of a smooth progression of shades/tones, a reduced range leading to sudden transitions. caused by excessive compression when saving jpegs

[southlander]

I am on the same track as StephenHampshire. Is the conversion to JPEG applying heavy file compression (ie you are ending up with a very small file size for the size of the image)? Heavy compression does not deal with subtle colour graduation like your sky at all well. I think in ACR, the Quality option controls compression (smaller number = more compression). Try Quality = 60 to 65%, this gives a good balance between file size and image quality for me. As you move Quality towards 100%, there seems to be very little compression applied, but files are not much smaller than the DNG you would have started with.

[Pauld]

I shoot RAW DNG 100% of the time and I get the same thing in my photos all the time. When I open the folders for post-processing in ACDsee Pro 6 it magically disappears and I'm left with a nice smooth blue sky.

[ihasa]

If the problem can't be solved by reducing the compression, or saving as 12 bit tiff, you could try introducing some 'film grain' at the conversion stage (this is possible in Lightroom, not sure about Photoshop ACR). If you can't do it this way, try this:

Select the sky with the magic wand tool.
Apply gaussian blur to smooth away the banding.
Add noise using photoshop filters (small amount, monochromatic).

[StephenHampshire]

I shoot RAW DNG 100% of the time and I get the same thing in my photos all the time. When I open the folders for post-processing in ACDsee Pro 6 it magically disappears and I'm left with a nice smooth blue sky.

The preview image may be using thre embedded jpeg which is highly comoressed. Whe converting the raw file before saving as a TIFF or JPEG there is o compressio so no posterisation. i use "Instant JPEG from Raw" for quick batch processing and sometimes get this problem on the jpeg, i just process the files normally (using Sagekight or RAW Therapee in my case) and the problem goes away

[SpecialK]

The term is banding, because it looks like bands (strips) of colors. Posterization is when similar colors are rendered as the same color with little detail, making it look more like a 5-color poster.

I had the banding issue when "upgrading" to a different graphics adapter. I went back to the integrated one which worked fine...