I also recommend using the Deband shader in Custom_settings.cfg if you use any kind of blur, even the Cin Tools dof. It's far better than dither (in sweetfx_settings.cfg) so turn that off and use deband instead. If you use dof at high values you'll see some colour banding; it can also be present when there are large blocks of colour with no dof enabled. Banding is basically caused when there are very minute colour variations in a scene that your monitor can't display because it doesn't have enough colours, so it interpolates and 'guesses' and substitutes another colour, so you don't always get a smooth gradient but bands of colours instead. You'll often see this in the sky, and if there is a vignette.
Deband might be a bit more costly in terms of performance than dither, but I haven't noticed too much of a problem.
My settings are:
#define USE_DEBAND 1 //[Deband] //-Applies debanding to minimize banding artifacts
//>Deband Settings<\\
#define DEBAND_RADIUS 128.0 //[0.0:1024.0] //-Sampling radius, higher values will reduce further banding but might also reduce details
#define DEBAND_THRESHOLD 0.018 //[0.000:0.100] //-Threshold, higher values will reduce further banding but might also reduce details and increase noise
#define DEBAND_SAMPLE_COUNT 8 //[1:8] //-Sample count, higher values are better
#define DEBAND_OFFSET_MODE 3 //[1:3] //-1 = cross (axis aligned, fast), 2 = diagonal (45 degrees, slower), 3 = box (fully random, much slower)
#define DEBAND_DITHERING 3 //[0:3] //-Additional dithering options to smoothen the output. 0 = No dithering 1 = Ordered dithering, 2 = Random dithering, 3 = Iestyn's RGB dither (Valve)
I don't know if I'm doing this right, it's all trial and error for me, but this seems to work well in DAI.
A radius of 128 seems to be a good compromise between reducing banding and maintaining details. You might be able to go higher. I don't know if it's necessary to double each time, but the top value being 1024 made me think it might be, so out of caution I've stuck to 64, 128, 256, 512 etc. Might not be necessary.
Anything above a threshold of 0.018 introduces quite a bit of noise (think grain). It seems to be animated grain as well, which is annoying. I don't really notice it at 0.018, but I do at 0.019. 0.018 doesn't get rid of all the banding I've experienced, but it does a damn good job. Experiment with it, even dropping it lower if you want.
I haven't experimented with the last two settings. I presume offset mode 3 is the best of the 3 available, but will be the most costly. As for dithering method, random is presumably better than ordered, and more costly, but I don't know how the rbg dither differs - still, that's the one I'm using and it's been positive so far. The top picture with the orange tree leaves ^ had some awful banding when I didn't have deband turned on.
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I just realized I follow you on Flickr, I don't want to flood your stream lol but I really like your work.
