Printing gradient help!

[Blacksmith]

My brother recreated some cabinet artwork for me on a pinball restoration that I am doing.  In the center of the artwork, there is a logo that has a gradient color scheme to it.  The artwork looks dead on perfect when viewing it on the pc screen, but upon printing it out, everything looks perfect except for the gradient.  It printed with some sort of banding effect to it and looks horrible!  I've tried to help him research this problem, but haven't come up with a solution that has worked.  Do any of you graphics gurus have some help that you could throw our way so I can continue the restoration?  

[phyrosis]

sounds like you are using a home based printer...

i would recommend if you are wanting to keep costs down to go and get it printed at a place like Staples. or get it commercially done.

[Blacksmith]

Nope.  actually a professional printer is doing the job.  He is totally baffled by the banding issue.  We don't know if it's the printer messing something up or what.  The job was done in Adobe Illustrator.

[Billy_Goatfeet]

  Try working in a higher bit depth.  Assuming you are working in Photoshop you are probably working in the default 8 bit per channel mode which will can cause banding on gradients.  Work in 16 bit depth or 32, although 32 is going to be overkill.   Let me know if that helps.

[Blacksmith]

Problem solved!  It was all in the printing software.  We took it to another printer and it printed out fine.  he said it was the "RIP" software.

[rooter]

For future reference, to correct banding problems, you just need to add some noise to the affected areas.

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