[Spiff]

The man in the hat has a halo of fine pixels around him, like he has been implanted into the picture.

I blew it up in my image manipulation software and what I see is consistant with the type of artifacting you get when compressing an imaging using something like the JPEG (.jpg) standard. The fine pixels are artifacts of the compression, not of photoshopping.

No, I'm not defending Hajj or Reuters as their photoshopping and pro-Islamofascist terrorist fraud is intolerable. I just want to report my observations on the issue that you brought up about the specific photo you referenced.

[Blogger]

Why would you get the pixels around the guy and the foreground while the background is rather smooth?

[usmcobra]

How can you get compression in an image by enlarging it?

Not a trick question, just a logical one, the more you enlarge an image, the more minor distortions caused by image manipulation should appear.