Spent 4 hours trying to fix color banding in my digital prints

I was getting these ugly stripes in my gradient backgrounds when I printed my art at a local shop. Tried everything in Procreate and Photoshop for hours. Turns out it was the file format. I was saving as JPEG and the compression was causing it. Switched to TIFF with a 16-bit depth and the banding disappeared completely. Anyone else run into this with their printing workflow?

3 comments

3 Comments

christopherw345d agoRising Star

Glad you figured it out. JPEG is the devil for anything with smooth gradients, especially if you're going to print it. I've had clients bring me files they spent days on and the banding ruins the whole thing. 16-bit TIFF is the way to go, but make sure your file size doesn't blow up too much. Some print shops have upload limits on file sizes, so check with them first. Also, double check your color space is set to CMYK if they use that. Saves a headache later.

emery2905d ago

Did you also spend the first hour frantically checking your monitor calibration before realizing it was something way more basic? lmao I feel that pain.

emery2905d ago

Checking monitor calibration" is usually for color work, not the basic stuff we all mess up. But yeah, the real issue was probably something like plugging the cable into the motherboard instead of the GPU. Either way, we all end up feeling like a rookie for an hour.