What is “antibanding” in photographing?

Question

What is \"antibanding\" in photography? I read this term in Android documentation for the android.hardware.Camera.Parameters.setAntibanding() method.

Answer 1

Nice example from this website:

Gradient effects may suffer from banding (contouring)
where noticeable steps can be seen from one shade to another.

Apparently this artifact can be typically caused by jpeg compression.
The Antibanding() feature tries to prevent this artifact.