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Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, needs to brush up on her Photoshop skills, apparently.
Over the weekend, the royal family released the first image of Middleton since her abdominal surgery in January. As the photo of her and her three smiling children started to circulate online, the Associated Press and other wire services issued an urgent notification to journalists not to use the image in editorial articles, suspecting the photo might be digitally altered.
Zooming in and examining the royal photo closely, it’s easy to see edges on the children's sweaters and other inconsistent details, particularly in the area around Princess Charlotte’s hand, that appear to be manipulated via photo-editing software. For example, portions of Middleton's hair appear to have an unnatural texture, and the zipper on her jacket leads to nowhere.
Middleton admitted altering the photo, taken by Prince William, in a Monday post on the couple’s X account, expressing “apologies for any confusion the family photograph” caused. What she didn’t cop to was how she edited the photo, what tools she used. That sin of omission has given online sleuths room to continue speculating about the bizarre circumstances around the image. Some theorized that the image had been generated by artificial intelligence; one viral tweet suggested Middleton’s face was lifted from an old Vogue cover. Odds are, though, that the image was just a poorly executed Photoshop job. For those who use the tool regularly, the tells are obvious.
“My guess is that the errors are coming from the stamp tool,” says WIRED design director Alyssa Walker. “It fuses the image together by pulling another part of the image.” When used haphazardly, this type of content stamp tool could easily introduce errors to an image, like the edges of clothing appearing to be cut off at random with poorly defined outlines.
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For Cameron Getty, an assistant photo editor at WIRED, the peculiar zipper stood out as a major red flag. “I think this proves that it's been altered,” says Getty. “You just wouldn't get that any other way.” He pointed out an odd line across the image where Kate’s zipper disappears and suggested the image might be a composite of more than one photo.
Other image analysis experts, speaking to the BBC, also noted the inconsistencies in the zipper, in addition to a blurry spot around Princess Charlotte’s knee that appears to be inconsistent with the paving stones in the background. The BBC analyzed the image’s metadata and found that it had been saved twice in Photoshop on a Mac, “but we do not know if both of these versions were saved on the same device.”
Does that mean the princess downloaded Adobe’s software and edited the Mother’s Day photo herself?
“Not a chance,” says Walker.
“No, that is the least believable thing about this whole story,” says Getty.
After the apology was shared online, Prince William and Princess Kate were photographed leaving Windsor Castle the same day. Those photographs have already led to a whole new wave of speculation about their legitimacy. WIRED was not able to contact the royal family via telephone before publication.
