[mathias]

Truly smooth gradients.

You've seen sites with the nifty gradient bars in the bg. I've noticed some using bad grads, though. Meaning, there are visible steps, or bars, in the gradient shading. This is crappy.

Been a photoshop user for years and finally realized 16-bit files get much smoother grads, well sort of. To test this, I started with an 8-bit file, I took a large layer, in this 8-bit file, with a linear 'Gradient Overlay' blending option applied (the layer is colored by a dynamic grad that stays the same height of the layer), rather than a static group of pixels that appeared to be a grad. See, this way PS is being told to fill two points (top of layer, and bottom of layer) with a color fill transitioning from the start color (black, in this case) and the end color (white). Well, on 8-bit (default) the grads can look like junk if you stretch them too far.
But convert the *.PSD yer working on to 16-bit and magicly, the grad smooths out. Not perfect, but the results are far better. Unfortunately, *.JPGs apparently don't support 16-bit, so PS doesn't even give you the option to 'save as' a *.JPG, *.GIF doesn't work as well, haven't really tried *.PNG. You can however use the 'save for web' dialogue to save it as a *.JPG. Not sure if it retains the 16-bit changes. Also, you can screenshot the 16-bit file and paste it into an 8-bit.
Well, there are my results thus far, not really conclusive yet, but I wanted to post on it to see what others have found. Thanks.

[roto]

Since it's a visual discovery, could we see some visual examples?

[adras]

PNG-24 is a 24 bit file. File size is big though. The crappy grads that you are talking about are probably saved as GIF in 64 colors, that's why they are crappy. Save them in .JPG at 80% and they should be fine.

[mathias]

I only started experimenting today, right before posting but have gained a little ground on the problem (I'm sure there's people out there that know all about it already, trouble is finding 'em).

Go here, the page is set to display two gradient images that meet in the center, each is set to take up 50% of the width.

That's all I've got that I can show so far. I'm sure I can improve on it, too.

NOTE: I have a dual display and it's more difficult to discern the difference in my right-side monitor, but it's there, subtle, people will know the difference.

[mathias]

Originally Posted by adras

PNG-24 is a 24 bit file. File size is big though. The crappy grads that you are talking about are probably saved as GIF in 64 colors, that's why they are crappy. Save them in .JPG at 80% and they should be fine.

Heh, I know all that jazz, it goes beyond that.

The 2 images used on the above linked page are 3k and 5k, difference = 2k, who cares.