Gradients suffer from banding, both during editing and (more important) on PNG exports. The banding becomes apparent with gradients over narrow ranges. I tried several ways to get from (Inkscape's) SVG to PNG and in the end found only one option that gets it right: Chromium. Source SVG and resulting PNGs attached. There's a relevant bug report back from 2008: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/180693 SVG: [gradient_test_01.svg](/uploads/4a8ea5ac9bdbd9b53eaba4280e2e4890/gradient_test_01.svg) Inkscape export (8bit per channel PNG):  Chromium, via clipboard (8bit per channel PNG):