How to avoid banding when uploading to Facebook?

I’ve tried Darktable, GIMP and RawTherapee, with various settings and no matter what I do, when I upload an image with a smooth gradient, like a clear sky, it always comes out with banding. I’ve tried uploading full 6000x4000 images, I’ve tried resizing to 2048 on the longest edge, I’ve tried different quality settings on export, but nothing completely removes banding.

I’ve done a bit of research and it appears to be an issue with 8bit jpeg, but it seems weird, because exporting an 8bit jped out of Capture One on Windows, and then uploading to Facebook gives no banding.

It is always a challenge to upload to FB because the compression and specs change. Many years ago, I gave up and uploaded the highest quality image I could and let FB butcher it. Now, I never upload photos. :slight_smile:

If you don’t mind, could you post a copy of CO’s output for us to examine?

What I would suggest at this point (I should really be sleeping and the night is almost over so I will be brief) is add noise to your image. While it might sound counter intuitive, adding artificial detail often helps. I even use this ninja technique in my processing, neat eh? Anyway, give it a try. There are probably other strategies.

What is the CO output you mention?

And about adding grain to images, that’s actually my default work process, but I might have missed something, as I couldn’t find the right module to do this in either RT or Darktable.

I’ll look again.

Can you share a typical picture that shows banding when exported as a 8-bit jpeg?

Have you tried the dithering module in darktable? Dithering will introduce some noise specially to avoid color banding.

https://www.darktable.org/usermanual/en/correction_group.html#dithering

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Capture One :slight_smile:

This is separate from grain. It is adding noise or dithering to give the image more resilience to the effects of compression and posterization. Ideally, you would apply this to affected areas only.

I can’t.

I just recently lost ALL of my photos in a derp moment.

I will however return to this post and share some examples once I get around to shooting some more.

In case you just accidentally deleted your files you should try Photorec. And don’t write anything on that storage device until your recovery

Yeah… I’ve given up on them. They were lost by deleting my whole D partition while installing my OS. I’ve tried Recuva (was using Windows at the time) and most of the files were in very bad shape.

Also the thought of having them restored into one single folder and then having to go through all of them to sort them wasn’t something I was about to do.

Oh, well, on the flip side, it feels sort of liberating, like having a totally fresh start in my photographic endeavour.

I do have about 80% of my work as jpegs, so that’s something. I’m mostly going to miss my less serious, family photos, but hey… those memories are still in my head and those can’t be accidentally deleted.

Here’s an image that shows pretty bad banding, especially when viewed at full brightness on a phone.

I can pload the raw and sidecar if you want to take a look at my processing.

edit: it seems it’s to do with Facebook’s uploading, as there doesn’t seem to be any banding when I upload it here.

Facebook applies heavy compression, which ruins images by adding banding and mosquito noise around contrasty edges.

There’s nothing you can do but… not upload to Facebook.

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Did you try NOT to be used by facebook?

What’s disturbing is not the compression but that your works and likeness can be used by FB and its advertisers. A long time ago I read a story where a woman’s profile and info was used for seedy dating ads without her permission.

Yeah, I get it, but for better or for worse, the vast majority of my audience is on Facebook.

I tried Flickr, 500px, Instagram but could never get any sort of meaningful interactions that way.

Afaic Facebook is sort of a necessary evil.

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You need to expand your horizons. Can’t depend on one platform nowadays.

A Just follow my advice in my first post: upload with max quality and full size. Toggle the high quality button or whatever you need to do on FB. Why do this? Because FB’s settings and compression change all the time! So if you use one method, it likely won’t work later on.

B Another strategy is to reduce your image to the lowest memory footprint possible; then FB won’t want to reduce it any further.

C1 has an idea of what FB does to the image (via connections and mainly $$$), so it applies the correct compression and optimization in advance. If it matches or is close to FB’s, then FB doesn’t distort it as much.

It is possible to avoid heavy Facebook compression. Two things. First ensure your longest edge is no larger then 2048. In this example you posted the long edge is over 3k pixels. Second set quality to 70 and use best sampling. Note after the resize you may need a light sharpening depending on the image. This should help prevent the banding. Capture One’s Facebook export preset has these things already set for you.

Note if your long edge is even one pixel larger then 2048 Facebook applies full compression without remorse.

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I always upload files at 2048 px on the long edge, but at 100% quality. I’ll try to lower it to 70 and see what happens.

Apart from the 2048 px limit on the long edge, I’ve also read somewhere to upload photos as (lossless) PNG to Facebook in order to prevent compression over compression. Might be something worthwhile to try…

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