What would a professional picture manipulator have done differently? (Picture: Metro.co.uk)
It’s not rare for people to poke fun at a bad Photoshop job – what’s less common is for one to instantly prompt a frenzy of conspiracy theories, as yesterday’s Mother’s Day post from Kate Middleton did.
Some imaginative users said the photo was proof Kensington Palace was not being completely honest with the public about the health of the Princess of Wales.
But today, Kate herself came out to admit she had used the photograph of her with her kids – taken by her husband Prince William – as an opportunity for an ‘experiment with editing’.
‘I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused,’ she wrote in a post on X.
‘I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day.’
Professional picture manipulators could only watch through their fingers.
‘It was very obvious it had been very badly edited,’ said Joanne Craske, who has run her own digital retouching business for the past 20 years.
‘I guessed it was probably an amateur who had done it. Half the sleeve was missing.’
She was referring to one of the biggest flags pointed out by social media: the cuff of Princess Charlotte’s sleeve, which was blurry and appeared to be missing a chunk.
Social media users were quick to point out the odd state of Princess Charlotte’s cuff (Picture: Kensington Palace)
Stephen Davies, a professional Photoshopper for the past decade, spotted a laundry list of mistakes in the image.
‘There’s about four different areas that show it,’ he said.
‘The first one is underneath Kate’s chin, the zip line to the jacket just doesn’t line up. That’s completely misaligned.
‘There’s something going on with [Princess Charlotte]’s sleeve, there’s something not quite right there. It looks like it hasn’t been blended together correctly.
‘Then, in the bottom corner by [Prince Louis], the skirting board isn’t lining up.
‘Lastly, there’s something going on with Kate’s right hand around the boy. It’s not motion blur, it’s just too soft and it looks like it’s out of focus, so something has definitely been manipulated there.’
Some of the biggest flaws in the Mother’s Day photograph (Picture: Reuters)
Stephen recognised it as an attempt at a job he does ‘quite regularly’ for his customers.
He said: ‘A common request I get is that someone will say to me, can you take these few photos and merge them together to make the perfect photo.
‘I think that’s all that Kate has done there, there’s nothing that she’s trying to hide or anything, she’s just wanted to make the perfect photo really, from multiple photos.’
Joanne said she initially thought the person editing the picture had used generative fill, a new addition to Photoshop that allows users to fill in a missing part of the image using AI.
‘But I don’t think it was,’ she said. ‘I think it was very badly retouched by the princess herself.’
Kate has regularly shared her photography efforts with the public to mark family events (Picture: AP)
Stephen speculated that Kate might have been ‘pressed for time, wanting to get that photo out for Mother’s Day’.
Asked if he had any tips for the princess, he said: ‘The technical term for what she has done here is using masks to blend the photo together, and it’s very easy to miss parts. I would just practice more with masks.
‘When you’re masking, you’re basically blending the photos together, but it can be quite easy to miss a spot.
‘You’ve got to zoom in to really see those blended areas and it’s just been overlooked.’
Alternatively, he joked: ‘Give me a call in the future!’
Joanne had a similar suggestion to help Kate avoid more Photoshop controversy: ‘Leave it to the experts!
‘As I say, it was very, very badly done. Get an expert to do it in the future.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.