Wow! Please don’t mind me asking a few potentially stupid questions: how did you manage to have such a lovely gradient without any colour stepping in the sky? I suppose this has to do with compression settings, right? Or does this rather depend on the chip in the camera? Likely both? Maybe you adjusted for this in post?
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Dadgum good question. Can’t wait to hear the answer.
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Far from a stupid question, and I’d love to provide a really detailed explanation as to why, but the fact is I don’t actually know. This was a RAW file processed via RawTherapee but with no other adjustments apart from a horizon rotation.
I suspect it’s the sensor and processor working to eliminate it because I’ve had colour stepping issues with previous photos, mainly on older smartphones.
Here’s another one I took with my Pixel 4 that night, again straight from the camera with no edits and I see limited colour stepping here.
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I’m no expert but one trick I used to use for gradients was to add a subtle amount of noise. This hinders the compression significantly, but allows for gradients to not end up pixelated. This was a long time ago, in the early days, so it could be that modern compressors and codecs don’t like that trick any more.
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This page details the problem and solution pretty well: http://www.outdoorphotoacademy.com/banding-avoid-get-rid/
The solution appears to be to avoid taking pictures in 8 bit per channel but rather set to 12, 14, or 16 bit. It’s likely that more advanced kit manages more bits and thus captures more detail in colour, hence helping with colour banding. Supposedly, jpgs are conventionally 8 bit per channel and RAW is… more, depending on the camera.
I like the characterisation of Per Brentsen on the Adobe community: “You can’t tell the difference between an 8-bit and a 16-bit image on screen - the advantage with 16-bit is that it can withstand heavy editing without deteriorating - it gives you editing headroom.” Except for maybe colour banding in the sky.
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Photoshop on iPad has updated a few times, but still misses a few features and tools found in Affinity for iPad. Worked on this image composite using Photoshop on iPad as well as Lightroom mobile.
Before and After
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Outstanding framing 
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Niiiiiiiice. Really like the reflection, too
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Where was this taken? It looks like it could be in my neck of the woods. That water on the ice gives me the willies.
Pic was taken in central Finland we have lots of lakes.
Ah. So do we here in Wisconsin. We also have many people of Scandinavian descent. What is the fisherman trying to catch? Here it would be northern pike, walleye, crappie, bass, perch.
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