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Because a layer style and a mask reach the renderer by different routes. A mask is pixel data on the layer itself and travels with it. Drop Shadow, Stroke and Blend If are a separate record, read once when you upload the template and stored with it. Every render afterwards composites from that stored record rather than from the file on your disk, which is why a clipping mask can come through while the style on the same layer does not. The answer therefore sits at the upload rather than at the render. Uploading the file again rebuilds the record from the file as it stands today, and that is the move to try before anything else.

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How to identify this issue

  • The mask, the opacity and the blend mode render, and only the style is missing.
  • Every effect on that one layer is gone together, rather than one of several.
  • Rendering the template at its own canvas width brings a small shadow back.

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Solution

1

Confirm the effect is switched on in the file.

Photoshop stores each effect with its own visibility, and the eye beside it in the Layers panel is what the upload reads. An effect left off is stored as off and is skipped at render.
2

Upload the template again.

Effects are read at upload, so a template registered before you last touched the file still carries the older record. A fresh upload hands back a new UUID for your renders to move to. Upload a PSD covers the call.
3

Render once at the template's own width.

Shadow distance and size scale with the output width you ask for, so a two pixel shadow rendered at a quarter of the canvas width lands under a pixel and reads as nothing. Confirm the effect at full width first, then reduce image_size.
4

Compare against Photoshop's own export.

Export the same file at the same width from Photoshop and set the two side by side.

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What renders as authored

Drop Shadow, Stroke and Blend If render from the file with no parameter in the render request, alongside masks, all 27 blend modes, opacity, warps and perspective transforms. The row by row table is on PSD compatibility, and What PSD features are supported shows how to read one specific file. A layer whose Fill is at zero keeps its effects. Photoshop reduces the fill pixels and leaves the style at the layer’s opacity, and the render follows the same rule, which is how a border built from a stroke alone goes on working.

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Get more help

  1. Re-read the upload response. A design area absent there will not appear in a render either, which points at the layer rather than at the style.
  2. Read the warnings array on the render. A supported feature that had to change appearance names itself with a stable code.
  3. Contact support with the mockup UUID, the layer name and the effect. A file attached to that message is the fastest route to an answer.