I have been playing around with some hex maps for board games and have noticed some 'artifacts' from the blur/feather functions in Photoshop when I start finalizing the maps.

The maps are created as 16 bit RGB but there is some noticeable 'terracing' with some of the bevel and embossing techniques that I've noticed. Has anyone else encountered this and have a work around?

I've tried simple solutions such as adding 1-2% noise and blurring out to around 8 pixels. The noise doesn't seem to have much effect and the blurring seems to aggravate the problem.

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