input file is a 16 bit tiff file.i just made it brighter in different editing tools.it ́s not a question that even 16 bit files can show banding.the problem is that photoshop, as the most used image application on earth, has some real issues when using the default settings.the results are quite devasting for photoshop.in fact every shareware tool i tested did this better.i don ́t want to imagine how many images i edited where i thought it ́s a tonal problem and i added (unnesessary) noise to the image to get rid of the banding.this is GRAVE GRAVE issue!!!the cache level setting should not influence the appearance of an image!on the left photoshop .. on the right acdsee.when i set the cache level in photoshop CC preferences to 1 the result looks much smoother and cleaner:it doesn ́t matter for the problem if i use "exposure" or a "levels" or "curve" adjustment.i am using:win7 64bit sp1intel i724gb ramnvidia 980 gtx (latest drivers)photoshop is the latest 64 bit CC version.i also tested this on my notebook with a nvidia 430 graphics card. the result was the same.the default cache level of "4" showed massive and ugly banding (i did not test higher cache levels).reducing the cache level to 1 showed much smoother images. all other image editing tools i tested don ́t show this massive banding issues. only photoshop has this problem.this issue was always labeld an "user error" in the past by adobe employees (advice was : add more noise to avoid banding").this example clearly shows that it is NOT an user error.i can reproduce this behavior on my systems and i asked friends who can also reproduce this with photoshop CC.more info here:grettings from germany.