Sky Replacement images have a big gray frame/border around three sides of the sky image after it is imported into Ps sky replacement interface.

Forum|Forum|7 days ago
August 4, 2026
3 replies
25 views

The border overlaps onto the image and makes it darker. What setting is causing this? It occurs whether I do the sky replacement completely in Ps or if I start the image processing in Lr and use the “edit in photoshop” feature. It does not happen to the same images used in On1 sky replacement so Photoshop is the chief suspect. The sky in the examples shown below was made smaller so the border was visible to illustrate the problem.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can point me in the right direction. I’m out of ideas for where else to look for the cause.

Top of sky image

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Where did the sky image come from?

Is it one of your own images?

What size (in pixels) is the sky image?

What size (in pixels) is the image that you are replacing the sky?

You say you have made the sky smaller to illustrate the issue, but that is confusing things.

Can you show us a full resolution screen shot of what you are actually seeing?

Claire H.

Community Manager

Hi @RuffedGrouse, Welcome to the Photoshop Community forum! Let's try a few things and see if we can fix this issue.

Use a larger sky image: if your custom sky is too small relative to your document, the gray border is the edge of the sky layer showing through. Try a higher-resolution sky file.
Increase Scale and adjust Shift Edge: in the Sky Replacement dialog, increase the Scale slider so the sky extends beyond the canvas edges, and tweak Shift Edge to push the boundary outward.
Check your GPU settings: go to Preferences > Performance and try toggling "Use Graphics Processor" off, then restart Photoshop. If that fixes it, update your GPU drivers and re-enable.

If none of these steps work, can you send your system info, a screen recording of the issue, and a numbered list of the exact steps needed to reproduce it? You can find your system info by going to Help > System Info, copying and pasting it into a text file, and attaching it here. Thanks! ^CH

R

RuffedGrouseAuthor

Participant

Hello Claire,

Thank you for your speedy reply!

I tried the GPU test...no difference.
The base image and the sky come from the same camera, no cropping, so it doesn’t seem that image size is the issue. I have a Sony crop frame and full frame and it happens with images from either camera so it doesn’t seem to be a camera issue either. The sky in the examples is small so the black edges are visible as an example. The sky imports at the proper size for the base image. The black borders are always the same size. They do not vary even in an image that I have cropped so that it contains only the sky.
I brought this problem to a KelbyOne instructor. He showed me a workflow in a video he made with images I supplied. His sky image didn’t have a black border. I repeated the workflow shown in the video using the same images but still ended up with the frame. This test, plus the fact that I don’t see the black frame using On1 sky replacement, makes me think its a setting in Ps. (I would rather use Ps over On1--more comfortable with it) When I tried my first sky replacements in 2023, I did not have this issue. The motherboard failed so the company provided an identical replacement in January 2025. That is the only hardware that has changed. I thought about interference from another photo program but the KelbyOne instructor uses On1 and Topaz as well so I guess not. I have attached my system info for both the computer and Ps/Lr. Hopefully that might shed some light on the mystery.

Thanks again for your help!

Janet (RuffedGrouse)

System info.docx

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