I am interested in learning how to resize the image so that the color banding doesn’t happen.

The original 8 megapixel image did not have any color banding, and instead the banding appeared when I resampled the image to a smaller size. I shot in RAW and then converted the image to a 16-bit per channel Tiff, and opened it in Photoshop. Dithering was enabled and I resized the image using bi-cubic resampling.

One thing I tried was to add some noise to the image before resizing. This indeed eliminated some of the banding artifact, but it also made the image look grainier (like higher ISO film). I also experimented with using some feathered selections around the bands and applying gaussian blur. That didn’t seem to help at all, unless I blurred too much that it eliminated the gradient altogether.

The problem is that this image has a very gradual gradient within a small brightness range, that occurs over a large area in the original image.

I am very much interested in how to remove such an artifact without detracting from the image clarity.

Obviously when using this image in print, the banding would not occur, because the image wouldn’t have to be resampled to a much smaller size. When resizing the image only slightly, the banding doesn’t occur. I tried resizing it progressively, in steps, but I got lazy and at the end made a big jump in decreasing the resolution and still got the banding – I’m not sure if that technique actually works.

[update July 15th: The color banding is only visible my old computer and CRT monitor, which may not be using true color. On newer LCD monitors I have found the banding is not apparent. So I guess this isn't a problem after all!]