Banding on fills

**glenngosack** · 02 August 2010, 10:56 PM

Wasn't there a registry tweak once to set the banding to 1024? I'm not sure who or when - but I thought someone found a way to minimize the visual appearance of bands.
Getting old and hard to remember

or am I thinking of something else?

**Drwyd** · 02 August 2010, 10:57 PM

Hi Steve

Are you saying that XDP6 cannot create/generate/export gradient fills without banding ?

**Nostaw** · 03 August 2010, 01:56 AM

Even the 'old trick' changing the fill from simple to repeating didn't help (apparently "linear" mode uses 255 steps while "repeating" uses 4095 steps).

Is everyone using LCD screens viewing the file? Does anyone with a Tube Monitor experiences the same issue?
I think this issue is LCD screen related rather than Xara?

I got the same result in Illustrator after exporting it from xara: banding madness.

**highfrontier** · 03 August 2010, 08:10 AM

Originally Posted by Nostaw

... Is everyone using LCD screens viewing the file? Does anyone with a Tube Monitor experiences the same issue?
I think this issue is LCD screen related rather than Xara?

I got the same result in Illustrator after exporting it from xara: banding madness.

depending on how bad the banding is, some of it could be the fault of the monitor.. however, even getting the best monitor won't solve the problem.
The reason for this is that Xara's palette totals 16million colours (255 red shades x 255 green shades x 255 blue shades) which sounds a lot, but if, for example you want to fill a large area with very dark blue (r0,g0,b10), graduating to black (r0,g0,b0), that means your choice of shades within that graduation are only 10 ! , hence the 10 visible bands.
Illustrator/Corel have the same limitation. Raster editors like Photoshop manage to sidestep the issue by dithering (creating a scatter pattern of similar coloured pixels nearby) and so disguise the problem.

If it's a real issue, you could add some fake dithering of your own by applying the 'diffuse' live effect..

**Albacore** · 03 August 2010, 08:39 AM

Do you not think this discussion on banding is limiting. You could be discussing about how it prints and not what it looks like. Then the discussion might look into the area of what type of printer was being used, inkjet or laser. If it was an inkjet what was the setting for halftoning, then colour intensity, then type of paper it was printed on. If it is for the web then there are tricks to reduce the banding as it is going to be at the end a bitmap.

**Rik** · 03 August 2010, 08:39 PM

Hi Albacore.

What I am trying to create is neither for print or the web.

I am trying to create a wallpaper for my desktop PC.
And I doubt if there is anything really inferior about my PC or the monitor or the graphics card.

Initially, I was surprised that there was banding?
So, my question was to do with that.
Apologies if I didn't say what exactly I was trying to create?

As far a I could see, the problem was simply banding in a fill, if the colours were close together. And I found this to be not very good for a programme like Xara.

But I have limited knowledge about how Xara works and it seems, reading some of the replies, that this is something that I will have to accept?!

Reading highfrontier's reply, it's something that we will all have to accept in Xara.

**Nostaw** · 03 August 2010, 10:26 PM

Originally Posted by highfrontier

Raster editors like Photoshop manage to sidestep the issue by dithering [...]

Exactly! I was under the impression the dithering option (see attached) was exactly suppose to do that?

**Rik** · 03 August 2010, 10:37 PM

Hi Nostaw.

I tried that. Didn't do anything for me. I mean that in the nicest possible way!

**Nostaw** · 03 August 2010, 10:42 PM

Originally Posted by Rik

Hi Nostaw.

I tried that. Didn't do anything for me. I mean that in the nicest possible way!

Yes I know, It doesn't do anything here either. I have always this option on for exactly this purpose, thinking it will interpolate by dithering fills but obviously I was wrong. So, what is this option suppose to do then? I can't find anything helpful in the manual either, except:

"These options set the dithering method used to display your document on the screen. It is recommended that you leave this on its default setting."

What does that mean?

**highfrontier** · 04 August 2010, 07:13 AM

Originally Posted by Nostaw

...It is recommended that you leave this on its default setting."
What does that mean?

lol! reminds me of SSK's error message :
http://www.talkgraphics.com/showpost...3&postcount=29

Dithering setting makes no difference here either - maybe it's a legacy thing from the days of 256 colour display settings, that doesn't do anything if you're on a higher colour depth.