Ask WCI - Banding Blues on New imac

Q:

i have a new imac and i have been having some trouble with banding in blue skies. i have inspected certain files on different monitors, and the banding is more obvious on this imac monitor. i was wondering if you could tell me... have you seen this sort of issue arise with the newer imacs? and do you believe it is a result of having a monitor that is that much better than previous incarnations, or do you believe there are shortcomings that would create the banding problem with this situation?

A:

You are seeing the limitations of display technology. Seeing banding on screen in large areas of even to somewhat graduated color is very common, particularly in blue skies. In most cases, this banding is not something that's in the file, it a false rendering of the file by the display system because of the limitations of a particular setup. There is no setup that will eliminate it 100% of the time, but in most cases it will not show up in the print because it is not in the file. It can be caused by a number of different causes from the physical hardware, video card, profile, monitor settings, and probably more. Proofing the file with a hard proof will tell you if this is in the file or just the monitor.

In regards to the imac, I have no experience with the new imacs, but since there are multiple causes for this phenomenon, I would not distrust your imac. If you looked hard enough I'm sure you'd find lots of files that showed banding on monitor A and not monitor B, and other files that were the opposite.

Rich Seiling