Posterized red

Here is how it looks (Photoshop as the analysis tool, magic wand, tolerance set to zero, anti-aliasing off, contiguous on, 44,600 pixels of the same value):

OK; I give up. What is it?

Just an example of a poor edit to get "vivid red", maybe due to clipping in a raw converter too. I was trying to show a trivial check for posterization.

Wow - remind me to continue editing at 32-bit floating point Linear RGB in the GIMP ...

single shot em5mk2

I never saw posterization using 8 bits with a gamma 2.2 profile ;)

dont see any posterization, show the edge where its posterized.

I find banding can be more of an issue than posterization if edits are pushed too far when using 8 bits or are they two names for the same thing?

Banding is considered to be a form of posterization; I know of a very few corner cases where posterization with 8 bits is unavoidable on a photo. Pushing too far may result in posterization for whatever the image bit depth is, and usually what results in posterization on a display or in print is about the same for any editing space bit depth.

your guess is as good as mine Danno

www.yourdictionary.com/posterize

it was that long a go i will see if i can find the raw if there was even one.
i cant even remember how i lit the shinny little seed. i have one in the studio atm and finding it quite hard to replicate the lighting.

In my experience it is usually only with gradients like a cloudless sky or in smaller scene elrments where posterization can become visually unacceptable if edits are pushed too far.

If I pixel peep I would expect that maybe most images will have some posterization but the question then becomes is it noticeable and unacceptable under normal viewing conditions for the particular image.

I doubt that to be found on the main subject of a high-quality image, and posterization isn't about pixels, it's about significant clusters of pixels having no colour variations and thus lacking details.

Fortunately for us these days, good editors use 32-bit floating point and a Linear wide-gamut workspace.

The destination is still effectively a low-bit monitor or a print ;)

Posterization, to me, is just quantization that manifests visibly. Contour banding is one of the most common and obvious forms that people see, common when they or their software use too much NR for 8-bit displays. If you want to polish a noisy image, you should always add a tad of equally-distributed noise (not Gaussian; it has unnecessary outliers) at a higher precision before converting to 8 bits.

Not all good editors, not all the time. Example: Photoshop.