Only pic he had was the one in the OP which is a jpg and whoever saved it didn't use a very high quality cause it has loads of artifacts (probably saved it as like 80% rather than 100%).yeah... did he send you a file or did you have to copy it from the forum?
if you copied it from the forum that ***** cause it looks grainy on the edges now. He needs to send the original file and it needs to be treated as a smart object.
Only way of taking out those artifacts is reducing the noise but then that makes the edges blury
