# Banding in LR



## OldWhizzKid (Mar 21, 2015)

I seem to have developed a banding problem and the only thing I can find in common among the banded photos is LR.  They are from two different cameras, present both as jpegs on my harddrive and on my website.  One image has a waffle-like pattern, most others have a radial pattern in the highlights centered on the center of the image.  I thought it might be the vignette, but taking that out doesn't remove the banding.  Of course, the jpegs are in sRGB.  I soft-proofed in sRGB and don's think I see it in the regular LR view, nor sRGB soft-proofed.  But as soon as I convert to jpeg, its visible.  For example, look at the one I left on my website:  http://www.robertbaring.com/#!/index/G0000SnUXKbLvYZY/I0000E7dldmw0lC4  (The March Of Time)

Its the seventh one in, scrolling to the right, an old man walking away from a younger group.

Any ideas, I think it must be something in the colorspace conversion, but its hitting some of my better images.

Robert


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## Rose Weir (Mar 21, 2015)

Re: One image has a waffle-like pattern, most others have a radial pattern in the highlights centered on the center of the image.

I don't see ' radial banding' on the 7 th image viewed on this color munki calibrated monitor.
There does appear to be a purple colour adjacent to the overhead light and to its left on the brick wall but that is another factor.
Overall its a gritty image and my thought is that some processes done to an image do not compress to jpg very well particularly with resizing included.
Of course, you could be using 'banding' to mean other than how I translate banding.
I have experienced 'banding' when a graduated colour was used in a background. The flow of the colour displayed with distinct 'bands' rather than flowing or blending in an arc. I exported the image again with a larger size and less compression and that effect diminished. This was in an image used in a slideshow video format and I interpreted that the slideshow software wasn't handling that type of processing. The slideshow software company couldn't see the banding that I saw <grin> or they didn't think it was that bad.
I had used the 73 to 75 setting in Lightroom when exporting the jpg which was resized to about half of the original image. I went to 3/4 ( 3600 wide)of the original image and the banding wasn't obvious in the blurred background effect.

You might just have to play around with export settings specific to the image.


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## acquacow (Mar 22, 2015)

I don't see anything obvious in that shot, but I do see some crazy circular Moire in this shot: *_DSC4197_DxOBright.jpg* http://www.robertbaring.com/#!/index/G0000SnUXKbLvYZY/I00000bWZy8xEcCc


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## Nogo (Mar 22, 2015)

The photo of the old man walking by the people near the construction vehicle has no banding that I see.  It looks like you applied heavy contrast, clarity, or sharpening to it in a way to give it an artistic gritty feel.  That works for this photo, I would not change that.  The only thing I see that you may even be calling banding are the straight vertical lines that appear part of the image.  The lines are the ones in the street where the wheels of passing cars leave their tread over time.  There is also a line between knee and waist level on the building that looks more like long term wear than anything due to the camera or processing.  If those lines are the ones you are calling banding, I believe they are just natural parts of the image that you are noticing because of the way the image is processed to give it that gritty feeling.

Almost all the lines I am talking about run from one side of the image to the other horizontally.  If what you are seeing is different, I don't see them at all.  That is looking at the images both on my laptop monitor and the wide gamut monitor.  I also looked at the images on IE and Firefox.  They all looked good on both browsers.

P.S.  I do see what acquacow mentioned in the rafters of the picture he linked to. It looks like the noise has a slight fingerprint pattern to it up there.  Even that is not distracting.  Just looks like some of the noise due to shadows being pulled up.


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## OldWhizzKid (Mar 24, 2015)

Thanks guys for checking it out.  I don't see the moire in the shot described, but that gives me an idea on the image I was originally talking about.  What I still see is a series of three or four concentric circular "bands" circling the outer four fifths or so of the image.  On the image aquacow was talking about, I can't see the moire, but I just replaced that image with a sharper one yesterday.  Anyone still see the moire now?

I'm wondering whether I have a monitor-dependent artifact problem.  That would be hard to deal with if a random set of people see the images variously with bands, moire, or worse.

I have a calibrated display, but that's only half the problem.  You guys are seeing possible moire that I can't see.

Thanks for the help.

Robert


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## OldWhizzKid (Mar 24, 2015)

More problems.  After looking closer, I've seen several new problems on images that I've put up on by website and can't figure out the source:  Another image with a faint "waffle" pattern in the shadow areas and one with speckles on it.  For simplicity sake, I just tried to troubleshoot the "speckled" image.  Its on the site at http://www.robertbaring.com/#!/index/G0000LVY5PP9MzD4/I0000vK0eRSlgtHE   (a picture of an outdoor clock late at night)

Its in B&W, looks perfect in LR develop mode (.NEF filetype).  The same with soft-proofing with sRGB in LR.  When I export it to Photoshop, it has one speck, and a few other smaller (barely noticeable) ones when zoomed in.  If I export it from LR to the desktop at 100% quality, it has several more noticeable specks.  If I export from LR (100% quality) to my website on Photoshelter (viewing it from the backend, non-public side or public side) it looks as if someone tossed a load of salt and pepper on it, which you can see from the link above.

Even if I export it from Photoshop and use Save for Web, it looks awful (using 100% quality, sRGB, optimized).  I re-installed LR 5.7 without change.

Any ideas?

Robert


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 24, 2015)

I can see the speckle, and I can see a pattern on this one http://robertbaring.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Welcome/G0000LVY5PP9MzD4/I0000WGSXgdYj9nA.  

So that's not visible when you're viewing it in LR? Are you zoomed into 1:1?  That's the only really accurate way to judge things like this.

Can you post a screenshot from LR?


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## OldWhizzKid (Mar 25, 2015)

Thanks for the help, Victoria.  Yes, at 100%, I can see some speckling.  But I'm looking at my pic on my website side-by-side with LR, they are the same size - one with and one without speckling. I guess I could use the spot removal tool on all those, but didn't think that should be necessary if it wasn't visible on the same size LR view.

Here are the two screen shots from LR in develop:





Sending this via Win7 snippet tool.  Surprised they are 5MB size.  The second one doesn't seem to want to upload.  I'll send it with another post.

Robert


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## OldWhizzKid (Mar 25, 2015)

Hmm.. didn't see that smaller one load, sorry.  The large one looks faithful to my LR view. Here's the other one (I hope):





Robert


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## OldWhizzKid (Mar 25, 2015)

The second image won't upload.  Any ideas?

Robert


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## acquacow (Mar 25, 2015)

Can you dump a raw image and a full-res JPEG export of the same image into google drive, then share the links here?

The speckling looks like hot pixels on the sensor (from long exposure, or high-iso exposure), most raw converters can detect/remove them and won't show them, but they could be showing up in the final image if you've pushed ISO digitally and increased exposure further, then it could exaggerate them.

I'd have to see a raw file to really understand what is going on...

Thanks,

-- Dave


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## acquacow (Mar 25, 2015)

Also, I kinda highlighted the areas the Moire pattern I was seeing are in this image... There are lots of them inbetween the yellow highlights, I just roughly traced a few on my tablet to show the shape/areas they are in.


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## OldWhizzKid (Mar 25, 2015)

Thanks aquacow,

Sorry, I don't give out my raws or full-res stuff, I'll eventually fix this, but if I lose control over the master, I can't edition it.

As for the moire above, I never saw those, but I edit on a calibrated, 80 cdm brightness monitor at night.  I just looked at it in LR.  If I crank the exposure slider all the way up, I can see it.  But as its supposed to be (much darker), its not visible.  Did you brighten up the image to show the moire or is that how your monitor sees it?  It was shot at ISO 6400, but that's usually not a problem for a D610.  What brightness level is your monitor set at?

I just tried to remove the moire with the adjustment brush...it doesn't budge it.

It may be also be due to having been initially converted in DxO OP and then brought into LR.

All this brings up a good idea though: I should check these images at a higher-than-normal brightness before posting them.  There's no guarantee that others will have a correctly adjusted monitor.

I may have to pull down some of these images though.  I'm not particularly dependent on them for the website.

Thanks,

Robert


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 25, 2015)

The Develop Fit view is downsized on the fly, so it's not as accurate.  If you zoom into 1:1 in Library and then zoom back out, that's about as close as you'll get to an accurate Fit view preview.

And yes, DXO would certainly have limited LR's control over the image.


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## acquacow (Mar 25, 2015)

OldWhizzKid said:


> Thanks aquacow,
> 
> Sorry, I don't give out my raws or full-res stuff, I'll eventually fix this, but if I lose control over the master, I can't edition it.


Fine, take a similar image that you aren't going to use and post that instead =) Should be easy enough to crank out a few test images at iso 6400 in the dark and import/process them the same way...



OldWhizzKid said:


> Did you brighten up the image to show the moire or is that how your monitor sees it?  It was shot at ISO 6400, but that's usually not a problem for a D610.


  I pulled a full-res off your site by playing with the URL a little bit, then editing it in MS Paint... no brightness/etc changes have been made to what I posted here... What I see, and what I posted, is what everyone else sees.



OldWhizzKid said:


> What brightness level is your monitor set at?


 About 120  cd/m[SUP]2[/SUP] on a calibrated Dell 2713HM.
At least according to the brightness#s recorded here: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell_u2713hm.htm



OldWhizzKid said:


> It may be also be due to having been initially converted in DxO OP and then brought into LR.


Quite possibly... I haven't fired up DxO in a while, but I haven't ever seen any strange artifacts from it...



OldWhizzKid said:


> All this brings up a good idea though: I should check these images at a higher-than-normal brightness before posting them.  There's no guarantee that others will have a correctly adjusted monitor.


80  cd/m[SUP]2[/SUP] seems a bit dark... you should probably be working closer to 100-120 cd/m[SUP]2[/SUP]



OldWhizzKid said:


> I may have to pull down some of these images though.  I'm not particularly dependent on them for the website.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Robert


No prob.


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## OldWhizzKid (Mar 29, 2015)

Thanks aquacow, where to begin?  These problem images are, of course, outliers and fixing one doesn't necessarily help me to fix a different image. But if you need to see another image, look at the clock image above.  That's from a screen shot of LR develop view (fit view). 

No big deal, but I'm interested in how you downloaded a "full-rez" off my site, as the site security is designed to prevent that.  Just a screen capture?  If I do a screen capture using the snippet tool, it is nearly always too dark, but your copy of my image above is too light.  My hunch is that the snippet tool doesn't color manage.

80 cdm is not just my opinion on a brightness level.  It is what is called for when editing in a 17 lux (dark) environment.  Its a hardware calibrated value on both a ColorMunki Photo setup and i1DisplayPro system.  I edit at night because, as you see, most of my images are night shots and to avoid washing out or having them appear to dim onscreen is critical.  Much more so than daytime images.  So I factor out the constantly changing intensity and color temperature of sunlight coming in by editing at night.  Then my editing environment is constant, so I consistently see my images in the same lighting.

If you haven't personally hardware-calibrated your monitor, then its difficult to know what its brightness setting is.  Our eyes are notoriously adaptable, so even if it came from the factory at exactly correct 120 cdm, that doesn't mean it still is.  That's pretty much the cornerstone of color management.  And while 120 cdm is probably about right for daylight viewing, its gonna be way to bright for looking at these sort of images at night.

All this is why I have a page on my website called "Best Viewing".  Adjusting using that grayscale ramp, a visitor can at least set brightness and contrast to approximate correct tonal response and see the shadow detail in my images.

That said, the wider world out there doesn't mostly use calibrated monitors, which is why you can't say "what everyone else sees".   My display matches my prints, my images on pc (Win7, Firefox, Chrome, IE), on iPhone/Pad, and Android, so I'm pretty confident in my calibration.  QA check on i1DP has a deltaE of about 1.3, which ain't bad....

But anyway........ the problem seems to lie with LR.  I can export an image right to my desktop and look at it side-by-side with the LR view and the artifacts are there in the exported jpeg. but not in any LR view.  Even exporting it into Photoshop shows the same, but fewer artifacts.  The clock image I posted a few posts above looks fine here, (I sent it from a screen shot) but even after carefully spot-removing the original in LR and re-uploaded on my site, looks like someone threw salt and pepper on it.  So I think LR is somehow corrupting the image on output.

I even reinstalled LR without change.  Maybe when LR 6 arrives, I'll see a fix, but for now looks like I need to upload a screen shot to my own website.  Sheesh!

Robert


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## Replytoken (Mar 29, 2015)

OldWhizzKid said:


> But anyway........ the problem seems to lie with LR.  I can export an image right to my desktop and look at it side-by-side with the LR view and the artifacts are there in the exported jpeg. but not in any LR view.  Even exporting it into Photoshop shows the same, but fewer artifacts.  The clock image I posted a few posts above looks fine here, (I sent it from a screen shot) but even after carefully spot-removing the original in LR and re-uploaded on my site, looks like someone threw salt and pepper on it.  So I think LR is somehow corrupting the image on output.



Robert,

I know that you said that you are exporting at 100%, but what are your other settings (perhaps a screenshot of your export dialog box)?  Also, have you soft proofed to see if you are out of gamut?

--Ken


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## OldWhizzKid (Mar 29, 2015)

Out of gamut on a black & white image?  I'd hope not.  Of course, I'm talking about the B&W clock image above for now. 

Export settings: "Upload anyway" | no rename | Jpeg, 100%, sRGB | no resize, 300ppi | Sharpen for screen, Standard | Copyright and Contact Info Only. 

As for the aforementioned clock image, I just remastered it in DxO OP and saved it to my desktop.  Then I dragged and dropped it to my website back end.  (So, I bypassed the LR export 

module)

And Lo and Behold, it is perfect (well perfectly what I intended anyway...)  http://www.robertbaring.com/#!/index/G0000LVY5PP9MzD4/I0000AvpDawwuCKE

So I'm thinking as I've said, that this is a LR issue. Or at least, an LR-related issue.

And as for out-of-gamut on the other (color) images, no, not out of gamut.  I have never had problems with gamut when converting to sRGB.  Always a good conversion up to now with LR. 

So, let's say I've solved the "spotting" issue.  Or at least its source.  I still have other artifacts: the "waffle" pattern and banding/moire that became apparent on this new website.

How about the "waffle", since we've already talked about it further back.  See this image on my site: http://www.robertbaring.com/#!/index/G0000LVY5PP9MzD4/I0000WGSXgdYj9nA

It has a faint "waffle", "grid" pattern on the areas immediately outside (to the left and right) of the window.  I've gone through several zoom ranges between fit and 100% and can't find any 

artifacts in LR while soft-proofing in sRGB.  If I export it to PShop, it does have the waffle, but much fainter.  If I take it from here into Topaz DeNoise, it identifies a faint waffle pattern.  I set 

it to remove vertical and horizontal banding and export it back to PShop.  Looks fine.  I further export it back to LR as a .tiff.  Looks great.  I export it via LR to my site.  Awful.  Worse banding, 

even across the dark parts of the window.  Even though this is a color image, the parts of the image with the waffle are essentially monochrome B&W.

I'm doing all this, by the way, while I'm posting this.  I've just put this image up on my PhotoShelter website as a .tiff (can handle all file types) via drag-and-drop.  Result?  Effing waffle pattern.  

I'm assuming PhotoShelter is converting it to a jpeg, though you can't tell.  Exported it again via LR export module.  Waffle pattern.

So it looks like I'm gonna.....see what DxO OP can do for now.  Or upload a screen shot of my own image on LR.

a few minutes later.....

I've put up a DxO OP version on the website.  No waffle.  I'll probably adjust it again.  The WB is slightly greener.  But no waffle I can see.

...to be continued.

Robert


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## Nogo (Mar 29, 2015)

OldWhizzKid said:


> No big deal, but I'm interested in how you downloaded a "full-rez" off my site, as the site security is designed to prevent that.  Just a screen capture?  If I do a screen capture using the snippet tool, it is nearly always too dark, but your copy of my image above is too light.  My hunch is that the snippet tool doesn't color manage.


I will PM you more information.  Don't ever trust a webpage design to protect your images from being stolen.  It requires more effort than just using the right site.


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## acquacow (Mar 29, 2015)

OldWhizzKid said:


> Thanks aquacow, where to begin?  These problem images are, of course, outliers and fixing one doesn't necessarily help me to fix a different image. But if you need to see another image, look at the clock image above.  That's from a screen shot of LR develop view (fit view).


An added screen-cap at a non-100% view in a program designed to hide hot pixels isn't of much use... I'd really need to see the source raw and exported jpeg with an xmp side car of a problem file to begin to figure out what is going on and why you are seeing what you are seeing.



OldWhizzKid said:


> No big deal, but I'm interested in how you downloaded a "full-rez" off my site, as the site security is designed to prevent that.  Just a screen capture?  If I do a screen capture using the snippet tool, it is nearly always too dark, but your copy of my image above is too light.  My hunch is that the snippet tool doesn't color manage.


Just a matter of playing with the image source and figuring out what dimensions you can feed to the url to see what sizes return. I don't know what your original upload size is, but I managed to pull out something that was much less-resized by an unknown algorithm than what was presented on your page originally.



OldWhizzKid said:


> 80 cdm is not just my opinion on a brightness level.  It is what is called for when editing in a 17 lux (dark) environment.  Its a hardware calibrated value on both a ColorMunki Photo setup and i1DisplayPro system.  I edit at night because, as you see, most of my images are night shots and to avoid washing out or having them appear to dim onscreen is critical.  Much more so than daytime images.  So I factor out the constantly changing intensity and color temperature of sunlight coming in by editing at night.  Then my editing environment is constant, so I consistently see my images in the same lighting.


 As an experiment, I pulled out HCFR and re-verified that 50% brightness on my monitor is about 154 cdm and as a further experiment now that it's dark out, I pulled the brightness down to a measured 80 cdm and I still see all the same artifacts in those images, so I don't think it's a brightness issue.



OldWhizzKid said:


> If you haven't personally hardware-calibrated your monitor, then its difficult to know what its brightness setting is.  Our eyes are notoriously adaptable, so even if it came from the factory at exactly correct 120 cdm, that doesn't mean it still is.  That's pretty much the cornerstone of color management.  And while 120 cdm is probably about right for daylight viewing, its gonna be way to bright for looking at these sort of images at night.


Working at 80 cdm right now, even in an otherwise pitch black room, just feels too dark to me. I've given my eyes 30 mins to adjust and colors don't seem as vibrant, whites feel dingy, etc... It's kinda like the difference of a photo taken in sunlight vs overcast... things are just too muted. Below 120 cdm, even in a perfectly dark room just doesn't look right... but you and I could have totally different monitor technologies causing this. I'm on an LED backlit AH-IPS screen.

-- Dave


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## Modesto Vega (Mar 29, 2015)

Are you using any lense profile corrections for any of these photos? If so which, lens are you using. Also are you using any vignetting in LR?

The reason for the first question is that I have seen lens profiles introducing banding on the corners of photos where there are supposed to be correcting vignetting issues. The banding was almost imperceptible until the image was exported. Furthermore, the banding was more noticeable depening on adjustments to the highligh slider and on local adjustments.


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## OldWhizzKid (Mar 30, 2015)

Dave, I'll think about the raw via Google drive thing.  Something I haven't thought about till last night is that my host, Photoshelter provided the LR export plugin to upload to my site.  It may be that the plugin is the culprit, as I didn't have these problems with my other site that didn't use the plugin.

The two X-rite calibration systems I mentioned above can/do measure the ambient light near your monitor and then specify the cdm according to the lux in the surrounding area.  There is quite a bit of info available on this subject.  You might try Northlight Images. http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/viewing.html 

If you normally use your monitor at 120 or greater cdm and then again after cal at 80, then sure, its gonna look duller.  The point is that its accurate for my environment lighting.  My screen matches my prints and jpegs on multiple platforms, which is the point of calibrating.  I have to set my monitor to "zero" brightness to achieve the 80.  It definitely seemed duller, but I got used to it.  The idea is to set your brightness to a setting that is useable with your lighting level.  If you're editing in daytime in a bright environment, then 120 maybe about right.  Look at a grayscale ramp and see if you can see all the levels.  That's really what you're shooting for.

Robert


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