Fix photo quality online for free
Upload a photo and instantly fix banding, gradient smudges, and compression artefacts, with no account or software needed.
Other online photo editing tools
Why do gradients in my photo show visible stripes?
When an image is stored as 8-bit, the standard for JPEG and most PNGs, each color channel has only 256 possible values. A gradual tonal shift like a pale-to-deep sky needs more steps than that to appear seamless. When it runs out of steps, the transitions become visible as distinct bands of color. This is banding, and it tends to show up on skies, flat painted walls, and any area with a slow, even tonal progression. The original capture rarely has this problem; RAW and 16-bit TIFF formats hold far more tonal information, and the steps only emerge the moment you export to a lower bit depth.
Why does my image look muddy or blocky after saving?
The most common cause is JPEG compression. To reduce file size, lossy formats drop image data the encoder assumes the eye won't notice. Push the compression too far and the damage becomes obvious: blocky patches, halos around high-contrast edges, and a general loss of fine detail. The problem compounds with repeated saving: re-encoding an already-compressed file introduces a second round of data loss on top of the first, so a photo exported three times looks noticeably worse than one exported once at the same quality setting.
Ways to restore image quality
- Stay lossless until the final export. Keep your master file as RAW or 16-bit TIFF throughout editing. Convert to JPEG only once, as the very last step. Every intermediate export costs you quality you can't get back.
- Apply targeted blur and noise in Photoshop. A Surface Blur on gradient areas smooths the tonal steps; a thin layer of luminance noise (0.5–2%) breaks up the pattern so the eye reads it as texture rather than stripes. Mask both adjustments so they only affect the problem areas.
- Improve photo quality online with our free tool above. Upload your image, choose a correction strength, and download the cleaned result. It handles banding, over-compression, and gradient smearing across JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and more, with no account or software needed.
Want to learn more?
We wrote a whole article on the topic in our blog with a more detailed view on the problem and solutions: De-banding and fixing compression artifacts