Remove gradient banding from images online
Smooth out tonal steps, gradient stripes, and banding artefacts in your photos for free, with no account or software needed.
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Why do gradients in photos look stepped instead of smooth?
A smooth gradient requires a continuous range of tonal values. An 8-bit image, the standard for JPEG and everyday PNG exports, stores each color channel in just 256 steps. When a gradient spans a narrow tonal range, those 256 steps aren't fine enough to cover every shade, so the image snaps between adjacent values and you see distinct stripes instead of a seamless blend. This is gradient banding. It's most pronounced on long, gradual transitions: skies, soft light falloff on a wall, out-of-focus backgrounds. Working files in RAW or 16-bit TIFF have far more steps and rarely show the problem, but it emerges on export to 8-bit.
Does compression make gradient banding worse?
Yes, significantly. JPEG compression groups similar tonal values together to reduce file size, which pushes marginally different shades into the same bucket. On a gradient that was already close to the banding threshold, that quantization step is enough to make the stripes clearly visible. What looked borderline in Lightroom can look obviously banded after a JPEG export at medium quality. Re-saving the file repeatedly makes it worse each time, as every encode introduces a new round of tonal flattening.
How to smooth out gradient banding
- Keep gradients in high bit depth for as long as possible. Work from RAW or 16-bit TIFF all the way through your edits. The extra bit depth gives gradients far more room to breathe. Export to JPEG or 8-bit PNG only as the final step.
- Blend and add micro-texture in Photoshop. A Surface Blur softens the hard tonal steps in a gradient; a very light luminance noise layer (0.5–2%) replaces the regularity with fine grain that reads as smooth to the eye. Use masked layers to target only the affected gradient areas.
- Remove gradient banding online with our free tool above. Upload your image, choose a correction strength, and download the smoothed result. Works on JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and more, straight in the browser, with no account or software required.
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