An outline appears around my brush strokes whenever I set it to 0% hardness. I have tried resetting the brush presets but it didn't work. Does anyone know a way to fix this?
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Like the others, I don't see anything wrong here either.
It sounds like banding, which happens whenever data are encoded into 8 bit color depth, where you only have 256 discrete steps from 0 to 255.
Even if your file is 16 bit, your display is probably not, unless you have an expensive 10 bit capable monitor. In other words - if the file is 16 bit, any banding you see is in your display system, not in the data.
But note that at less than 66.67% zoom, all Photoshop previews are rendered in 8 bit! That means a 16 bit file will also diplay 8 bit banding. This is a common gotcha that can sometimes trip people up. This banding will disappear when you zoom in to 100%, so check that first. *
The problem with banding is that it's cumulative. It can happen in several places in the display chain - a bad monitor profile, calibration tables in the video card, the panel itself - and if they pile on top of each other, the result can be irregular banding that is very obvious.
As long as you work in 16 bit depth, it's nothing you really need to worry about as such - except if you make bad editing decisions based on a faulty display of the file. If it just bothers you to look at, the standard remedy is to add a tiny bit of noise. Not much, just enough to break the banding up.
* Here's how that looks:
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