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21,318 posts
Dec 23, 2006Everything looks smooth from here in your screen grabs (within my ability to tell - you've downsized the images). This may imply you're having a monitor, cable, or (possibly) video card failure.
Just to verify in the other direction, does this image look smooth to you or blocky and pixelated? Check it in both your browser and Photoshop.
-Noel
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Yes you're right that the picture was too dark, i made the screenshot brighter. (Thank you for the camera tip, i'm not used to these forums yet!) Perhaps you can see it now?
And that is indeed what i mean, when i use the brush it doesn't color smoothly but in blocks that look pixelated. It used to work fine until recently, and i haven't changed any settings.
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I'm afraid that hasn't fixed the problem..Perhaps i should show you an example of what i want to get back to:
This is the previous picture i did but i can no longer get the colors to overlap smoothly like this because the shading is now blocky (or in rings, as you said earlier). If you compare it to the screenshot, you should be able to see a difference (if it isn't my monitor settings after all). Do you know of any other settings that could have affected it?| -
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21,318 posts
Dec 23, 2006I can explain it, but it gets a bit technical.
In 8 bits/channel mode, every red, green, and blue component of a pixel's color is quantized to fit in 8 bits - meaning there are only 256 different levels of red, green, and blue.
In short, in an 8 bits/channel document, there are only so many shades you can have. Generally speaking, with a good monitor the difference between these shades is just about visible.
Worse yet, if you do anything to an image where you manipulate it - e.g., brightening it with Curves or something - adjacent shades that differed by one level can end up differing by more than one level and become even more visible.
In order to "cover up" the blockiness/posterization that you've already accumulated, you'll need to blend those areas after having switched to 16 bit mode, possibly as I said using the Smudge Tool to "smear" adjacent pixels together. Try it. It may take a while to get the hang of it, but it does work. The other alternative is to just repaint those areas from scratch. Like I said, it may not be easy to fix, but I don't think all is lost.
Another technique people sometimes use to hide posterization is to add noise selectively, which tends to break up the digital appearance of the noise.
As an example I smudged, added noise, and a tiny bit of motion blur to selections within one of the feathers in the image you posted...
-Noel
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I've done the calibration, the brightness should be fine now (i now see the pictures as dark too), but the problem of the brushes and gradients not being smooth is still there (both in 8 bits and 16 bits). I checked the pictures on my mother's laptop and my brother's desktop, we see the problem on their computers too so I'm not sure why you don't see it...My graphics adapter is NVIDIA Geforce 610M 2GB.
In the WIP, I marked the rings i see and the stripes in the gradient (which i get in both 8 bit and 16 bit). The picture is still dark but it is meant to be dark, the stripes and rings are more visible when using lighter colors though. The skin on the character looks fine, its only when i started painting the wings that the problem started. All my previous pictures look fine too, but when i open a new document and start painting the problem is there too.
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