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What Is Color Banding and How Do You Reduce It?

Banding is when a smooth gradient shows as distinct stripes instead of a seamless blend. Spot it instantly with the Color Gradient Test and Greyscale Test.

Why it happens

  • Panel bit depth — true 8-bit shows 16.7M colors; cheaper 6-bit + FRC panels dither to fake it and can band.
  • Output settings — your GPU may be sending limited color depth or the wrong RGB range.
  • Content & compression — heavily compressed video/images bake banding in; the display only reveals it.

How to reduce it

  1. Set full color depth in your GPU control panel (8-bit or 10-bit, RGB Full range).
  2. Match the range — set the display to Full/PC RGB if the GPU outputs Full, to avoid crushed or washed levels.
  3. Disable aggressive image processing ("dynamic contrast" can worsen banding).
  4. For media, use higher-bitrate sources; nothing fixes banding already encoded into a file.

Panel vs content

Run the gradient test with a clean local pattern (not a compressed video). If that bands, it's the panel/output chain. If only certain videos band, it's the content.