Thanks for the clarification ZCA! Yup, i wanted a darker sky and overprocessed my "man" thus forming the halos. In the corrected one i lose the halo but also lost some tone and texture on the man's shirt/pants but i can live with that i suppose. By the way, to "correct" the picture i just played with levels and slight curve adjustment and then converted to B&W in PS, which is the extent of my PS abilities at the moment. Oh yes, oversharpening the first picture also causes halos and i didn't do any sharpening on the corrected picture.