Messed up gradients

[s.ketch]

Whenever I do a simple 2 color gradient it's not exactly smooth. There's weird banding that form 'steps' between values. It looks like a really low-quality .jpg or .gif. I noticed that having more contrast between the two colors helps but it's still unprofessional looking. Blurring it doesn't help.

I got the color mode as RGB/16bit. All the settings in for the gradient tool are set right. Smooth is at 100%, the transition is positioned right along with transparency.

[Jason Ross]

I had a similar problem a while back but learned that it was my monitor. But even after that my gradients weren't as perfect as I wanted them to be. Motion blurs in the direction of the gradient helped a little and adding noise helped more. However the only way that seems satisfactory was to work larger, apply gradient, add about 1% noise, then add some blur, then shrink the image afterwards.

[hecartha]

Whenever I do a simple 2 color gradient it's not exactly smooth. There's weird banding that form 'steps' between values. It looks like a really low-quality .jpg or .gif. I noticed that having more contrast between the two colors helps but it's still unprofessional looking. Blurring it doesn't help.

I got the color mode as RGB/16bit. All the settings in for the gradient tool are set right. Smooth is at 100%, the transition is positioned right along with transparency.First, you need to remember your graphic card and your monitor are just there as a visual feedback of what you are doing.
But this feedback has its limitation and this limitation is, it is only 8-bit which means 256 steps from white to black or 256 steps per component red, green and blue, 256*256*256=16,777216 million colors so that is normal on our sharp high resolution screen that 256 steps look bad (banding).

Anyway, as a visual feedback it does not show everything.
16-bit is 65536 steps per component (Benefits Of Working With 16-Bit Images In Photoshop (http://www.photoshopessentials.com/essentials/16-bit/page-2.php)) and your monitor nor your graphic card are able to show you them but they are there. You can observe them using simple test:
-create a black to white gradient (big enough document requested) and zoom in where you see the banding issue.
-make a little selection where you are seeing the issue
-use now the levels to make the brighter color white and the darkest color black and you will see there is lot more colors than what your monitor or your graphic card can display.
So, if you are using 16-bit image, do not try to fix a problem which is not there because the problem is not located in your file but in your graphic card and your monitor. I suppose what Jason Ross is saying is about 8-bit image.

This year, 10-bit lcd panel has been released to mass market which increases the number of color that can be displayed (1024 steps per component) but there is still an issue with graphic card (you can read this from TFTCentral about 10-bit display (http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/news_archive/19.htm#10-bit_ips))

[s.ketch]

Thanks, I was worried that it was my monitor or graphics card output. I'll play with it and see if anything changes.