Funky lines when zooming in on solid colour in PS - any ideas?

Hi all,

I’m working on a file and when I zoom in very closely on some of the shapes I see some funky lines whether should be solid colours. The strange thing is that I have several versions of the file and in some I do have the lines, in others I don’t.

These are not gradients, so it’s not the well-known banding problem, at least I don’t think it is. Also how, in some files at present, and in others it’s not? Even if I copy and paste layer styles or simply start from scratch in some files they are present, in others do not.

Any ideas what this may be?

I tried printing out the file and imprinted doesn’t show.

He is a screenshot of the zoom:

Thanks for any tips

Chris

What image mode are you on?

CMYK 8 bit – I tried changing back and forth between different modes but it made no difference…

Here’s a screenie from the same file with black background:

It doesn’t seem to matter what colours I use on either file. One has the lines the other doesn’t. Both with the same colour mode.

Cheers

Chris

chrisatlemon said
CMYK 8 bit – I tried changing back and forth between different modes but it made no difference…

Cheers

Chris

If you like, upload the PSD somewhere and I’ll check it on my end. I have a few ideas why you might be seeing those lines.

Looks to me like the bevel and emboss layer effect is doing it. The ‘Chisel Hard’ and ‘Chisel Soft’ technique makes this happen. The angles of the shapes you’re using determine how visible the lines are — hence why on some layers they are visible, and on some they are not. Try rotating your layer with the problem and you’ll see what I mean. Any edge that is either vertical or horizontal will not show the lines, but any other angle will show them with varying amounts. The Angle and Altitude settings on the Bevel and Emboss also affect how visible the lines are. You can actually see them on your lines2.png on the top right magenta shape.

I’m don’t think there’s a way to get rid of it sorry. You can use the ‘soften’ slider but it just makes things look blurry and isn’t really a fix.

@cspcreative you’re probably right, I looked closer on the file with the darker background and in some cases you can also see those lines. Only a lot less than the other file.

@crozer here’s a sample of the file having trouble with:

Maybe it’s just easiest to get rid of the chisel levels and just recreate the effect with some simple shapes. The effect is a bit inconsistent over the entire design in any case and I had to make some manual adjustments. So I may just kill it altogether and use vector shapes…

Many thanks for taking a look

Cheers

Chris

You could try this:

• Create your 4 basic colored rectangle shapes with each color and apply the bevel and emboss effect (don’t distort the rectangles yet). Make them a bit bigger than you’re actually going to use them.
• Set up your 4 colored boxes as a column on top of each other.
• Select all four rectangles from the layers palette and Group them
• Convert the Group into a Smart Object
• Open the Smart Object (double click on the Smart Object icon) and go to Image > Trim and select transparent pixels. For some reason when you create a smart object it puts a border of transparent pixels around the object. The reason why you need to delete these transparent pixels is for when you make your Perspective/Distort transformations to your Smart Object — the transform handles will actually be at the edge of your object, and not at the edge of the transparent pixel border — if that makes sense!
• Save and close the Smart Object
• Now you should have a Smart Object that has 4 rectangles in it with no transparent pixels around it.
• Duplicate the Smart Object (keep the original!) and transform the duplicate. When you create another column, again duplicate the original and edit the duplicate. Transforming an already transformed object is a pain!
• Now if you want to change the color of your blocks all you need to do is open up one instance of the smart object, change the color of each layer, save and close, then all your blocks should update in one go! And you wont have any lines from the Bevel and Boss effect.

Thanks for that!

I was actually thinking of simply creating the rectangular shape out of four triangles and converting that to a smart object. This way I wouldn’t need any layer styles at all.

I will definitely try your technique, thanks for the tip, much appreciated!

Cheers

Chris

No problem!