Unleashed Education Blog

Editing Toolbox: How to Fix Banding in the Sky

editing toolbox free editing tutorials Jul 29, 2022
 

By Craig Turner-Bullock

Have you ever noticed weird stuff happening in the sky in your image?

I'm not talking about accidental UFO captures or shooting stars, I'm talking about banding!

Banding is where the colour gradients, usually in areas of a single tone are not rendered properly. Big blue skies or solid coloured studio backdrops can be susceptible to Banding. The result is bands of slightly different shades of that colour being clearly visible.

This is usually a digital problem that happens on screen only, though it can also happen in printed images too. But knowing it is a digital issue doesn't really help you show your work looking perfect when it comes to social media or website. So in this Editing Toolbox video, I'll show you how to fix it.

I'm sharing a few tips for the best shooting and editing practices to help prevent banding. If those don't work for you, I've got 3 different ways you can remove it using photoshop.

A single one of these techniques may be all you need. However, sometimes you'll have to combine these techniques for the most successful results, depending on how bad the banding is.

If you like these quick tutorials, you'll love our premium Unleashed Edits - full start-to-finish editing tutorials in Lightroom and Photoshop. These are available in our membership (along with a tonne of amazing pet photography education). We hope to see you there!

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