If you’ve ever created a gradient or drop shadow in Photoshop and had it “band” when saving (especially for for the Web), you’ll appreciate this tip: To eliminate banding, add a little Gaussian noise to the Luminance channel.

Do this: switch to Lab Color mode (Mode> Lab Color), turn off the a & b channels in the Channels panel, leaving only the Luminance channel visible.

Select Noise> Add Noise from the Filter menu. Click on the Gaussian button and use from 2% to 4% in the Amount field.

Switch back to your original color mode when satisfied.

Jay Nelson

Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.