Adding noise to prevent banding in fake sky

[seepea]

I am printing this photo huge--10 foot by 4 foot.  I've added the blue sky with a gradient layer and am not surprised that I am seeing banding in my test prints.  I am following your tutorial on safely adding noise to an image to deal with this.  In the tutorial, you show how to adjust the layer opacity for stronger or weaker noise.  My question is, if I get rid of the banding in a 20inch by 8inch test print, will it be the same in my huge print?  In other words, does the huge print affect the amount of noise I want?  Also, I'm assuming I add the noise before sharpening and then sharpen as usual--or should I adjust the sharpening in the area with the noise added?  (as an aside, I'm not happy with the color blue I've added to the sky--it is too deep for my taste.  Is there a shade of blue you prefer?).

[Damien Symonds]

4 hours ago, seepea said:

My question is, if I get rid of the banding in a 20inch by 8inch test print, will it be the same in my huge print?

Yes, I believe so.  If the amount of your noise that you added to your PSD was sufficient to prevent banding in the test print, it will also be sufficient for a bigger print.

4 hours ago, seepea said:

Also, I'm assuming I add the noise before sharpening and then sharpen as usual--or should I adjust the sharpening in the area with the noise added?

The noise is added  to your PSD master file, so yes, of course it's added before sharpening.  Then yes, sharpen as usual.

4 hours ago, seepea said:

(as an aside, I'm not happy with the color blue I've added to the sky--it is too deep for my taste.

I agree with this.  It's implausible.

[seepea]

I cannot figure out why the gradient is changing when I crop.  The first is a screenshot of my whole photo in PSE 11.  The second screenshot is the same--I just blacked out the portion of the photo I am going to crop away.  Then I go ahead and crop and I end up with the third screenshot.  Why is that happening?  Why is the gradient getting pulled down into the cropped image?

[Damien Symonds]

Because you're cropping before you flatten!  You MUST flatten as the very first step towards preparing for print.

[seepea]

Sigh.  Sometimes I could kick myself.  Please accept my sincere thanks for all you do.  Honestly, you have no idea how much it means to me.