Unmesh Dinda 0:00 Today I'm going to share with you two quick
ways to fix banding in Photoshop.
Now if you want to understand what banding is in depth, there's a dedicated video you
can watch using the link in the description.
So here we are in Photoshop and as you can see there's a ton of banding in this photo
and the first technique to remove it is pretty simple.
If it doesn't work, we'll move to the second one.
And technique number one is 16 bit Surface Blur.
As the name suggests, first of all, make sure that you're working on a 16 bit image.
To do that, go to Image - Mode and just change it to 16 bit if it's not already 16 bits per
channel.
Just change that.
Now nothing happens.
However, the bit depth of the document has been increased.
Now what you need to do is to select the background layer.
Make sure that is selected and then press Ctrl or Command + J. Now before applying Surface
Blur, let's convert this layer into a Smart Object so that we can change the values of
Surface Blur later.
Let's go to Filter and then Convert for Smart Filters and then hit OK.
Next?
Simple, go to Filter - Blur and then Surface Blur.
Now, Surface Blur spares the blur in detailed areas.
And as you can see directly, it has already removed most of those banding.
And the way it works is, first of all, let's increase the Radius very high, something around
40 or 50-ish.
Now, Threshold is the key.
As you can see, it's not blurring out our subject, but it's blurring out those banding.
Have a look at it.
Here's the before, lot of banding here and there, right, here is the after.
Let me just move to other part of the image to make it more clearer to you.
Here's the before, here is the after.
I'm not sure where they can see it, because YouTube again compresses this and maybe it
might create some banding, but I hope you're getting the idea.
Now, what Threshold does is that it controls which level of detail to spare from blurring.
That's pretty much it.
So if you increase the Threshold, all the way up high, it will begin to blur everything.
Now, gradually if you bring it to the left, the bigger details will be spared from blurring.
So, let's decrease it.
You can see the bigger details are showing up.
Now, we're going to stop just at the point where the banding starts showing up.
So, we can go lower, no problem, let's go even lower.
But if you go too low, like number two, you can see the banding is back.
So, let's increase it to about, even if you increase it to 9, or maybe 11, the banding
is gone.
Now, let's have a look at the before and after.
So, here is the before with a ton of banding, here is the after.
Just to be safe, I'm going to keep it at about 12 or maybe let's keep it 18.
That's fine, and hit OK.
Now you will notice that some of the areas of the subject has been blurred.
Here's the before, here's the after.
And that's when we can use masking.
So all we have to do is to click on the Mask button right in there and then simply take
the brush, make sure the foreground color is black.
We want to hide the subject from the blurred layer and just bring back the details.
Just paint black on the subject.
Now, what is the concept of mask?
Black hides and white shows up.
So, let's just bring back the details of the subject and we are good to go.
And most of the times, you can just stop in this step.
Now, there is a tiny bit of banding still in here and tackle that, we can add a little
bit, just a little bit of noise.
And the best way to add noise is this - Ctrl + Shift + N or press Command + Shift + N on
a Mac.
This brings up the New Layer dialog box.
Now change the Mode to Overlay.
Make sure you check this - Fill with Overlay Neutral Color, and you can name this Noise.
Simple.
Now, let's convert this into a Smart Object as well.
Go to Filter - Convert for Smart Filters and then hit OK so that we can change the values
of Noise as well.
Then go to Filter - Noise and then Add Noise.
Now, inside of that, you can try Uniform or Gaussian.
Just make sure it's monochrome.
Now, you can increase the amount of noise as much as you like.
I'm going to keep it all the way to the left.
And just at the point where you stop seeing the banding, stop.
Now here, I can see a tiny bit of banding, not so much, very tiny bit.
So, I'm just going to increase it slowly and gradually and stop at the point where I stop
seeing the banding.
So, at about 3 or 4, I stopped seeing it.
So, I'm going to keep it at 4.
That's fine.
Uniform and monochrome works for me.
You can also try Gaussian.
So I'm going to keep it at Uniform and hit OK.
And there you go.
Banding is completely gone.
Now, if you want to make the noise a little more realistic, here's a tip.
Let me show that to you.
Go to Filter - Blur and then Gaussian Blur and apply a blur of 0.8 or 0.6.
Somewhere around that number.
Let's go for 0.5.
Look how the noise blurs and looks like a real film grain noise.
It's amazing.
So, here is before, here is after with the noise added.
It's absolutely gone.
Now, if you're interested, you can also create a mask in here and just mask of the subject,
remove the noise from that of the subject.
Now you don't have to create the mask again and again because we already did it in here.
So, you can hold the Alt or Option, click on the Mask, click and drag it over here right
there..
Replace Layer Mask?
Yes.
And it's already gone.
If you had not created the mask, if it was just like this, you can do this without even
replacing.
So hold the Alt or Option, click and drag and drop it right there.
Done.
So that was technique number one.
Now if this technique does not work for you, or maybe you don't want to add the noise,
that's one technique number two jumps in and that is adding texture.
Very simple to do.
So here we are again with a lot of banding as you can see, and the simplest thing you
can do here is just..
I'm going to go to my Finder and drag and drop in texture.
As simple as that.
So I'm going to drag it and drop it into Photoshop over the canvas.
Right.
Now you can adjust it the way you like it.
I'm going to make it a little bigger.
And then you can try and any Blend Mode that you like.
Now there are tons of ways of applying texture to your images and we have a lot of videos
on that.
You can check it out on our channel.
However, one of the simplest ways is just change the Blend Mode.
Since this is gray, let's change it to Overlay.
And as you can see, the banding is gone.
Now, you don't have to be so harsh in here, you can decrease the Opacity all the way to
zero and gradually increase it and stop at the point where the banding is gone.
There's a ton of banding now.
Let's increase it gradually.
So I'm going to stop just right there.
At about 37, all of the banding is gone.
Now, if you want, you can just increase it even more for some specialized effects.
That's upon you.
Now what I'm going to do, I'm going to add a Curves Adjustment layer and just apply it
to the texture to make the texture, and just the texture, a little brighter.
Now, if you do anything in here, it's going to affect the subject as well.
So we don't want to do that.
So, let's create a Clipping Mask.
Click on the Clipping Mask button.
Now, everything we do, it's only going to apply to the wall or the texture.
So I'm going to make it a little brighter, like that, and I'm kind of liking the effect
in here.
Absolutely loving it.
Now what you can do, once you're happy with the texture and everything, I'm just going
to move the texture a little bit, make it a little bigger.
Now, you can just move it off the subject.
So, with the Wall Texture layer selected, click on the Mask button right there and then
take the brush, foreground color black, and then just simply paint on the subject.
Very simple, right?
We can be a little careful in here, but you get the basic idea of how this can be done
very easily.
So there you go.
That's another way to tackle banding in Photoshop.
So, that's pretty much it for this video.
Hope this video helped you and if it did, make sure to give us a like and also don't
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I'll see you guys in my next one.
Till then, stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai