"Jet Man" Yves Rossy Attempts First Intercontinental Flight, Ditches Into Atlantic

I absolutely love this guy!
I'm looking forward to reading/seeing more about him!

The photo indeed seems to have been cartoonized.

"24 mile expanse... 140 mph... 6.5-foot..."

I recommend that you add metric units to your articles, if you want to be seen as serious news source to the world.

@KH- Yeah, that's some shameful post-production editing for sure!

KH

- I don't believe there's any photoshopping taking place. It's just the material of his suit that seems to be making it look a bit cartoonish. I imagine that what he wears is some sort of wet suit should he have to ditch in the water (which he did), and that it incorporates some sort of retro-reflective technology to allow rescuers to better see him in the ocean (as well as highlight the sponsors). If you have ever photographed retro-reflective material--the sort you see on emergency jackets or running shoes or a cat's eyes, you'd know that they don't appear like "normal" materials. They reflect light with a minimum of scattering because the material's angle of incidence is greater than zero. That is unlike a mirror, which reflects light only perpendicularly.

There is SO much light reflected off his his legs you can see the "bloom" - optical effect where brightness and saturation "bleed" color into nearby areas if intensity of the light is sufficient enough. Therefore, it's not inconceivable that reflected light off the ocean can illuminate him from below, and not just from above. Even though his arm may appear to be "glowing", I can detect a very gradual and slight shadow that is consistent with how retro-reflective material behaves.

But I agree that upon first inspection, it does appear photoshopped/altered from a real photograph. But I don't believe it is. After all, the guy's in a jet wing flying. That's like photoshopping earrings on a real life, flying pig with wings. There's just no point to it.

KH, Jetman's suit might have reflective material for his safety. Because of direct light, his arm was glowing! You can also notice the edge of the red thing on his ankle also glowing.

It's obviously edited, that huge post above mine notwithstanding. Probably was edited to make the sponsor logos more readable, but the lines are too sharp on the wing, i can almost see the oversharp artifacts...

The only things not edited are his face plate, and his chute and the white structures to either side and below it
, and the bottoms of his footwear.

Podboq

I imagine the "artifacts" you are referring to are no more than regular compression artifacts. That in itself is not an indicator of alterations of any kind, it only indicates wanting to save space on a server somewhere.

In fact, if they did really alter it to improve clarity of the advertisement, why would they do so without making the smaller text more readable? Clearly, the big letters are legible, but nothing else is underneath the main text that is going across the top of the wings. Why try to improve something like that without fully completing the job? It's just ridiculous to think that anyone would be paid to do "fix" a photograph and have most of your work be completely unreadable.

It's really besides the point of the article, but it's quite obvious and unarguable that the photo is edited.

I didn't say it was edited well! lol

After looking at it again, ALL of the red parts were modified later... the wing has no shading as a curved surface would, it's too uniform. The light bloom around his legs is a real photo effect of exposing for the sea and the darker parts of his equipment, they have a slight halo.

See, now my first question woulda been about Mr. Rossy's well being, and the cause(s) for the ditching. Was the wing recovered? How far did he actually get before he was forced to ditch? But I guess whether or not the photo was altered should take precedence over whether he broke anything other than, say, wind, or a world record for distance in the world's first, fully functional jet-pack. I dunno, maybe it's me.

rif... how do metric units make an article more realistic? Those are just numbers, if you're sick of not understanding the imperial system (considering this IS an american website) then why dont you google metric converters

as for the rest of you worrying about photoshopping, you need to focus on the big picture. he attempted an international flight, how freaking cool is that

Dear KH,

you, my worrisome friend, have, yet again, completely missed the point, to wit: who gives a rats @$$ if the photo is edited or not!!!! The guy tried to cross the Atlantic Ocean for pete's sake and all you geeks care about is whether or not, and to what extent, the photograph at the top of the article was photoshopped????!!!!

ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME DOT COM???!!!

GET A LIFE DOT COM
HERE'S A QUARTER, GO BUY A CLUE DOT COM