can I fix these color bands?

<p>I took this with my D300, and got some wierd colors on the elevator. Is there an easy (or hard) way to remove these using CS3?</p><div></div>

<p>what weird colors are you referring to? the overall change in tone under the words "Hawk Hills" or the moire-like patterns in that same area? This is tough since the colors are *so* close to one another.</p>

<p>I've seen this done in a Dan Margulis tutorial and I dont remember all the steps but I think a first crack might be something like convert to LAB, drive the b channel apart wildly (increase the angle) to get the darker color bands isolated, create a selection mask w/ low fuzziness to grab those colors and then (?) do replace colors w/ a blend-if followed. I'd have to think more about that last step or 3.</p>

<p>I often find simple is better. Create a new layer, change the blend mode to "color." Select the proper color of the building. Paint over the color bands. </p>

<p>Isn't the 'banding' in that 100% crop the texture of the siding on that structure? Maybe I'm just missing what you are seeing?</p>

<p>In lab mode you can use surface blur on the a and b channels to get rid of the moire like patterns. The a and b channels can be blurred a little since all the detail and contrast is in the luminosity channel. Use surface blur instead of gaussian blur because surface blur has a threshold setting to protect the edges. Then sharpen the luminosity channel.<br>

Another step you can add before going into lab is to create an edge mask using filter> stylize> find edges on a copy of the green channel. Blur the green copy slightly with gaussian blur and increase the contrast using curves (or levels). After going into lab mode load the edge mask before using surface blur. This will let you use stronger settings for surface blur since the edges are protected.<br>

I also tried the color noise reduction setting in ACR and that seem to work pretty well.</p>