.PSD gradient colors band up when saved to .BMP

Arg. I am trying to make a desktop wallpaper in Photoshop 5.5 and have been saving it as a .PSD file since I'm working with a lot of layers. There are a few gradients in my design, and when I save the file from a .PSD to a .BMP (so it can be used as a wallpaper) the gradients in my design band up, kinda' like the colors are being averaged in Save for the Web or something. Is there something I can do to prevent this? I see so many high quality wall paper images on the net, there has to be a way...

Thanks in advance for any helpful advice. :-)

*pixie*

A lot of the desktop backgrounds on the net are just high quality jpgs. You can set them as your background when you have the Active Desktop turned on. They are also a lot smaller to download. Just upload the files to your web site, and then people can right-click on the image and then click on "Set as wallpaper" and it will automatically turn on Active Desktop and set that image as your background.

Derek

I agree with deker, use the high quality .jpg for you wallpapers

as for the banding....try adding a little noise to the gradients layer to break up the banding effect.

Thanks for your advice and I tried both adding some noise to the gradients and saving it as a "12" maximum quality .jpg, but it's _still_ banding. See here: http://images.honesty.com/imagedata/h/171/58/31715883.jpg

I don't understand why! Please help help help. Thank youuuu.

I don't notice any banding at all. Where do you see it? Check the color settings on your computer. Make sure they are on 24 or 32 bit. I use 32 bit, and I see no banding anywhere on the image. If you don't know how to change your color settings, just let me know.

OMG My monitor was set to 16 bit. :-P ! It's an old one so it only goes up to 24 bit, but that is good enough to get rid of the banding. Thanks so much for the heads up on that. Yeeehaw.

What color should I make the background? Black seems so boring... I considered a light powder blue kind of color, but can't decide. Any suggestions?

A blue would look nice, but you might lose the effect of the glass, as it would not be as noticeable on a light background. Try it and see how it looks though! Some people prefer dark backgrounds though, so they aren't so blinded when they look at the monitor for hours at a time in the dark. But that is, like you said, very boring. And it seems like everyone that makes a desktop theme always makes it dark and futuristic and 'scary'. So be different. Go with the blue.

Derek

very cool pixie...

is that bryce?

Set your display colors to at least 24-bit

Guess I was too late on that one........