Why do I sometimes see banding in my photos after uploading?

Banding happens when smooth gradients, like soft skies or subtle shadows, turn into visible steps or stripes. It’s most noticeable in black and white work or images with very delicate tonal shifts.

This is usually a side effect of compression. When you upload a photo to Glass, we process it into multiple versions for display across devices. This keeps things fast and lightweight while still showing your work in high quality. But like all modern image compression, this process can occasionally struggle with ultra-subtle gradients, which leads to banding.

If you're seeing this in one of your photos, you didn’t do anything wrong and your original image is just fine. But if you want to reduce the chance of it happening again, a small amount of noise or grain added before export can help smooth out the transition zones. Even a tiny bit can make a noticeable difference without affecting the look of your image.