Why do i have these horrible pixelated regions in my 5DIII images?

[SDphotog]

Need some help here, I imported my shiny new 5DIII RAW files into Lightroom 4.  The first screengrab below shows a zoomed-in region (evening sky) inside Lightroom of the unprocessed RAW file.  It looks like there are only really two tones, sort of imagined the bit depth would be much greater?  The situation becomes even more noticeable on jpg export when I get the subsequent horrifying result.  Can anyone clue me in as to what's going on?  I of course have no camera jpgs for comparison, I've been a RAW shooter forever and never had any such trouble with my 5DII...

(Camera settings: ISO 50, 24mm, f/11, 30 sec. Also observed for ISO 100, 200, etc.)

[PhilDrinkwater]

Well it looks like banding to me although I am on my phone... I don't know why you'd be getting it though.

[SDphotog]

Added some grain, that did the trick.  Thought the pixel depth of the 5DIII would have saved me, but I guess not!

[SomeGuyInNewJersey]

Try printing it and see if you still get the banding. I experienced similar on screen banding in the clouds on the pano stitch image below when I was editing it in CS5 and Lightroom, although the copy I have online to attach here doesnt actually seem to show it as its been reduced too much.
It vanished on printing, I chopped it into 3 parts and printed each at 20x30 inches.
I think it was due to the software reducing the size to screen and maybe monitor lacking the color depth of the image/print.

[dturano]

I noticed a similar issue with aperture and my raw files, certain fabrics looked way to digital and grainy.  The same raw image in canons software looked how I hoped it would.

Could be a software issue, lr4 beta supports raw 5dmk3 files but not lr4, adobe may still be reverse engineering the new raw format.

Try shooting jog+raw and compare in lr4, see if the same issues show up I'm both images.

[AUGS]

Did you do any post work on the image to brighten/lighten it?  When I've done that in the past I have created banding in the darker areas in particular.
Secondly, a 400k jpeg at full resolution is quite small (I appreciate you may have done this to be able to post the image here).  Have you checked your default jpeg export settings? Try 100% quality and see if the banding disappears.
I'm sure you've done this many times (as you've worked with RAW), so please take these comments as helpful suggestions rather than criticism.

[jrista]

The jpeg definitely looks like it has compression posterization (the banding in the sky). Thats usually caused by high levels of compression with smooth gradients. You'll need to compress very little or not at all to eliminate the banding in the jpeg.

As for the screenshot, I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking at. It definitely looks better than the jpeg, so I doubt that is the reason for the banding. LR 4.1 is a release candidate, and its support for 5D III RAW's is preliminary. I would double-check the original CR2 files in Canon DPP to make sure the issue isn't "baked in". If everything looks fine in DPP, then the issue is LR4's support for 5D III RAW, and you should give Adobe a big, long, loud holler (LR4 has a LOT of issues, not the least of which are some pretty severe performance issues, so they may need an extra kick in the groin to get their act in gear and make LR4 what people have paid for it to be...including 5D III support!)

[KurtStevens]

I think i'm having a simliar problem here.  I think some of it (or all of it) is due to the LR4 conversion from raw to jpeg.

http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=5505.0

[SDphotog]

Thanks all for the replies!

Thought I would update regarding the "solution" I claimed before, namely adding grain (it hurt to do) to eliminate the posterization. The prior shot was untouched, the following involved the post-processing I wanted to do.  Anyway, the first shot is the result of my normal workflow and the second is the same plus adding a grain value of 21 (ouch).  The posterization doesn't look gone but it's definitely diminished.  Of course, I set the camera to ISO 50 so as to obtain a CLEAN image, not happy about having to undo that.  I'll happily report to Lightroom, any advice on the best way to go about it?

[Henrik Nordberg]

Please excuse me if this is too obvious, but make sure the color depth on your computer is set to 32 bits (not 16).

Henrik

[SDphotog]

Please excuse me if this is too obvious, but make sure the color depth on your computer is set to 32 bits (not 16).

Henrik

My Macbook Pro claims 32-bit color in the "About This Mac" tab, so I don't think that's it...

[hoghavemercy]

it could be a video card issue on your pc, happens like that with the monitor and all see if they have updated drivers for your card.

[wickidwombat]

has this been through photomatix?
if so i would put that down as the cause, I think it has something to do with photomatix saving out 16 bit tiff files and it will do this.

I've also seen this happen if you change between programs with different working spaces like adobe rgb and srgb or prophoto rgb so make sure all you programs are set to have the same working colour space

they are the 2 main things I can think of at the moment where I have seen this happen before

[thenickdude]

It's obvious by looking at the buildings in the full JPG you uploaded that this is simply due to the JPEG quality being set extremely low on Lightroom export - the buildings are full of compression artifacts too, you're just causing banding by extreme JPEG compression.

In the Export menu of Lightroom, scroll down to the "file settings" section and crank up the Quality slider. 80 or 90 looks good. Make sure that "limit file size" isn't ticked.

[Aglet]

over-compressed jpg or, sometimes, AdobeRGB jpg as the output colorspace may show more posterization than sRGB cuz it has to cover a wider range with only 8 bits/color.
Yup, adding noise in post is sometimes a useful work-around. (but I don't want it from my camera)