Does this photo look pixelated and/or grainy?

[TyMN]

I recently took a sunset picture and when I opened it up in photoshop cs5, the sky seemed to be either pixelated or grainy. I did shoot jpeg. I'm not sure which one but I've tried removing the grain except the pixelation stayed. If it is pixelation, how can I remove this?



Ty

[jeeperman]

I am not seeing pixelation, however I am seeing some banding in the sky. The noise does not seem bad but things {the boat/clouds} do seem a bit soft.

[TyMN]

I am not seeing pixelation, however I am seeing some banding in the sky. The noise does not seem bad but things {the boat/clouds} do seem a bit soft.

What is banding?

[jeeperman]

Banding is basically an improper color representation. It can sometimes happen in camera when the camera/jpeg processing has some trouble getting the colors smoothed out. It can also happen in PP through posterization.

I am not very technical and I am sure there are those here that can explain it much better than I.
What I am seeing is the rainbow shaped lines going through your sky. Hope this helps some.

[Mahn England]

What you are seeing is known as "posterization". In other words there is information missing in the photo file that results in banding (a lack of smooth transitions between values).

It might be worth reading this:

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...terization.htm

The histogram of the photo shows this clearly as "comb-toothing" marked below the histogram with a red line:



...shame because otherwise it is a nice photo.

[TyMN]

What you are seeing is known as "posterization". In other words there is information missing in the photo file that results in banding (a lack of smooth transitions between values).

It might be worth reading this:

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...terization.htm

The histogram of the photo shows this clearly as "comb-toothing" marked below the histogram with a red line:



...shame because otherwise it is a nice photo.

Thank you for clearing this up. If I shoot RAW, would it reduce the risk of posterization?

[Sunray]

If you shoot Raw you can have much more control in PP and converting to jpg. Most (all ? ) Raw development software does not do any changes to the original picture data. Changes are stored in a database or in separate files. In the final step all the changes you have made to the picture are merged into the exported file, eg .jpg or .tif. Many cameras that can save Raw pictures allow to save a Raw together with a camera made .jpg. So you can train your Raw PP skill and compare it with the jpg conversion the camera made. It does not take a long time to get used to Raw converters. There are a lot of Raw converters out there. Some are free, like http://www.rawtherapee.com/ or
http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/.
Personally I use Adobe Lightroom in version 3 but i am going to upgrade to the latest version in a few days. Adobe offers a 30 days full featured trial version of this product. So you can try without risk.

Bye
Robert

[TyMN]

If you shoot Raw you can have much more control in PP and converting to jpg. Most (all ? ) Raw development software does not do any changes to the original picture data. Changes are stored in a database or in separate files. In the final step all the changes you have made to the picture are merged into the exported file, eg .jpg or .tif. Many cameras that can save Raw pictures allow to save a Raw together with a camera made .jpg. So you can train your Raw PP skill and compare it with the jpg conversion the camera made. It does not take a long time to get used to Raw converters. There are a lot of Raw converters out there. Some are free, like http://www.rawtherapee.com/ or
http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/.
Personally I use Adobe Lightroom in version 3 but i am going to upgrade to the latest version in a few days. Adobe offers a 30 days full featured trial version of this product. So you can try without risk.

Bye
Robert

I do have Adobe Photoshop cs5 and Adobe Lightroom. The Raw converters in both programs work great however, I never experienced banding in an image before. When I shot the photo, I forgot to shoot Raw and found out it was jpeg when I looked at them on the computer. I see that shooting Raw uses 16 bit instead of jpeg which uses 8 bit so I can use more information in the highlights and shadows without increasing banding.