How do you get rid of debanding artifacts?

[stefsan]

This might sound stupid but maybe someone can help me out: I shoot with a 7D and in RAW and even in broad daylight the pictures suffer from quite a lot of banding. I use NIK Dfine 2.0 in Photoshop CS6 to clean up noise and banding. The debanding produces strange spiky artifacts around edges though (see pictures below). Does anyone know how to avoid those or how to get rid of them?

[SPL]

Hi
I also shoot RAW with a 7D. Very happy with the camera, however my landscape images usually result in terrible vertical and horizontal banding noise in the sky.  Terrible noise at ISO 100.  Drives me nuts… I usually use Nik DFine 2.0 which helps a lot. I would like to give LR4 and/or DXO a try.  Interested to read what other peoples comments are from this post.

[K-amps]

Try Topaz denoise. They have a free trial download. I use a combo of Topaz and Nik, sometimes both for high ISO pics.

[stefsan]

Thanks guys for taking the time to write an answer. But it seems that I did not make clear what my problem is. To get rid of banding and other noise in my 7D RAW's I use NIK Dfine 2.0. But in some cases the debanding algorithm seems to introduce some really annoying artifacts of its own (see the picture in the original post –> the encircled "spikes"). This seems to occur especially where starkly contrasting edges are involved, like a snow covered mountain ridge against a (fairly) blue sky.
My question now is how to prevent or to get rid of these NIK-introduced artifacts?

[Pyrenees]

I am told that Topaz Denoise 5 does a good job with vertical/horizontal banding. Previous versions do not have that feature. Although I have this software, I am yet to see any banding on my 30D (I love this camera, even thought it's 124 years old), and so can't vouch for its effectiveness.

With images that are only partially affected by banding, it may be worth considering the use of layer masks to protect other areas from the processing.

[Pyrenees]

Thanks guys for taking the time to write an answer. But it seems that I did not make clear what my problem is. To get rid of banding and other noise in my 7D RAW's I use NIK Dfine 2.0. But in some cases the debanding algorithm seems to introduce some really annoying artifacts of its own (see the picture in the original post –> the encircled "spikes"). This seems to occur especially where starkly contrasting edges are involved, like a snow covered mountain ridge against a (fairly) blue sky.
My question now is how to prevent or to get rid of these NIK-introduced artifacts?

You could try Topaz Denoise 5, although, it may produce the same artifacts.

After debanding, you may want to resort to layer masks around the affected edges. For instance, use a soft brush to select the area(s) in the sky, then apply a slight blurring (e.g. using Median Filter or the like).