I don’t have one coherent theory for exactly what happened with the The Mother’s Day Photo Catastrophe of 2024. I’ve watched some of the TikToks and seen a lot of the tweets, and my best guess is that originally, this was a months-old photo which was recently and poorly edited, and they plopped an even older pic of “Kate’s head” onto the months-old photo to create some kind of Frankenstein’s monster of a Mother’s Day portrait. Then Kensington Palace arrogantly decided that everything looked great and people were too stupid to figure out what was done, and that’s when everything went sideways. One of the most egregious lies, in my opinion, is the insistence that William took the photo last week. Like, KP is still sticking with that as their official story, which is bonkers. In the past 48 hours, photo experts and professional analysts have come out of the woodwork to figure out what the hell happened here. Many of them have settled on the “Kate’s head was plopped onto this photo” theory too.
The digital fingerprint of the Princess of Wales’s family photograph suggests that she merged multiple images using Photoshop. Analysis of data embedded in the image indicates that a copy and paste function was used, most likely in the section featuring her face. The method appears to be confirmed by the clear horizontal line stretching across the Princess’s chest, albeit not exactly in line.
The “metadata” suggests that the photograph was taken on Friday at Adelaide Cottage, the family’s Windsor home. The first edit was made at 9.54pm that evening, with the second at 9.39am on Saturday morning. Data show that the image was saved in photo editing software Adobe Photoshop twice on an Apple Mac.
The photograph was taken on a Canon 5D mark IV, which retails at £2,929, using a Canon 50mm lens, which is priced at £1,629. The Prince of Wales took the photograph.
Yeah, the “merging multiple photos” or Frankenstein Photo Theory is a popular one and I think it makes sense. It would also explain Kensington Palace’s refusal to release “the original” photo, because their web of lies would unravel quickly, especially if this was based on a photo taken last November(and not by William). CNN got an MIT professor on the case and this guy says it was a Frankenstein image.
There are three types of photo manipulation, according to Ramesh Raskar, an associate professor at MIT Media Lab who’s worked on special photography and images projects for Apple and Facebook over the years: appearance, where the tones or lighting may change; geometric, which involves moving around subjects or objects; and generative AI, a more recent concept that allows users to write text prompts that generate completely new images. He said Kate’s picture appeared to have both appearance and geometric changes, and was likely not AI-generated.
“The manipulation in this image is very unique,” he said, noting changes that impacted the placement of her children’s clothing. “It’s unlikely that it was ever one single image. A photo editing app probably introduced these errors.”
He said he believes the “subtle” edits were done very finely, potentially with a third-party app or editing software such as Photoshop, versus using built-in smartphone tools. He noted that similar errors can occur if a user starts splicing and merging different images together. “It all comes from real pieces of photos, but it’s more like a collage.”
But even Photoshop is becoming less complex to use with the introduction of generative-AI tools being added directly to the software. Although Kate’s errors are apparent, Raskar said it will soon become harder to identify the authenticity of images. Image tools with generative AI will allow so much more than photo manipulation because people will be able to create images from completely new scenarios.
All of which to say, this really is a f–k up on a global scale. Multiple global news outlets “killing” a palace-issued Frankenstein photo, an international audience analyzing how badly palace employees are at photo-editing, and worse yet, Prince William and his staff are too f–king stupid, incompetent and arrogant to crisis-manage in a real way. They really believed their domestic and international audience would eat this up and no one would question it. Now their credibility is gone. At some point this week, I might create a list of all of the things William has lied about just in the past two years, because it’s A LOT.
Cover courtesy of British Vogue, photos courtesy of Kensington Palace.
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- Peter Phillips and his wife Autumn Phillips arrive for Gold Cup day, The Festival at Cheltenham Racecourse 2019, Cheltenham Glos,Image: 535596650, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Avalon.red – sales@avalon.red London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251 Madrid: +34 91 533 4289, Model Release: no, Credit line: Jules Annan / Avalon
And Nero fiddles while Rome burns…………..
I had an epiphany about what’s happening. She just wants to wait until the prednisone wears off. She *could* be working. Anyone who’s had bowel surgery knows the timeline. So what they are hiding is that she doesn’t want to be seen and doesn’t want to be called vain. I don’t entirely blame her. Being thin and pretty is her whole identity and she must be spiraling.
It’s not as dishy but Occam’s razor is that they’re letting Rome burn to hide moon face.
@Snaggletooth, she could wait without sending a fake photo to news agencies. I don’t really understand their logic. If they wanted to stop conspiracies, they could share a note from her without photo or a handwritten note for a more personal approach. Lying shouldn’t have been an option, but they still don’t understand they can control british media, but not social media or international press. Sure, they can create social media hate campaign against a black woman, but controlling a narrative without giving any info isn’t possible.
this has been a theory we’ve been floating around for a while now, but at this point I think there is something else going on or else KP would have released a picture of her, puffy face or not.
Snaggletooth, I just don’t believe at this (end?) stage of their relationship that Pegs would allow her to hide to save her vanity. And why would he also need to take 3 months off? That doesn’t add up for me because, as we know, Pegs is not a compassionate spouse. And also, if it were just a swollen face she could still be working from home. Nothing about this entire thing adds up.
They could/should have let her be more relatable. She could have handwritten and published something like “I’m releasing a picture to celebrate mother’s day, from a time (perhaps “from last year”) when I was feeling much more presentable! I especially wanted to share the feeling of being surrounded by the love of my children, which is what all mothers work towards. As others who’ve been through abdominal surgery will appreciate, I don’t feel up to photos at the moment. But I am working from home on the projects dear to me. And thank you for your cards. Here are some I’ve found particularly lovely.” Blah blah!
People on this site forget that Kate Middleton is not in any position to control any narratives right now, unless William and KP are on board. Forget Kate spreading lies about Meghan and what not, this is major f-up that is affecting the heir to the British throne. Kate has absolutely zero say in whether she appears or not, puffy face, bloated or otherwise, if producing her or appearing in whatever state is gonna take the heat off of William and his KP minions, she will be produced screaming and kicking, but she will be shown. The fact that the only thing they could manage was a blurry person in a speeding car with face turned away from cameras but still obscuring her face is a big red flag, at least to me. William and KP are not showing Kate not because they won’t but rather, because they CAN’T. That’s my theory.
I’m just really amused that the rats are now eating their own tails, are pissed that “William is very unmanly to make Kate take the fall’ (Eden) while other’s are on William’s side claiming that Kate made a choice to doctor the picture and has thus taken responsibility Kay). I’m just sitting here with popcorn in hand and enjoying the sh!t show.
lol ok well I tried to think of what an explanation that is most consistent with stupid, lazy, and incompetent and this did seem likely enough (especially after seeing her very puffy face in the car last week). They could be tossing out pics to try to calm the storm but are too stupid to realize they’ve totally lost control. Idk I’m willing to believe they hate each other but I still am not sure it’s a full divorce/coma/runaway Kate. I just think they could truly be amateur hour enough to turn a little sleight of hand into a full blown moon-landing conspiracy.
Also you’re right that my explanation doesn’t account for will—but maybe it’s a confluence of his laziness and addiction taking advantage of her hiatus? Idk!!
And Sparrow that would have been great. Competent PR staff could have drafted something perfectly.
I think your theory is likely. It sounds like her face and the areas surrounding her and the kids saw the most manipulation. And I now have no doubt that she at least did some of the “editing” out of vanity, hence why KP was so quick to have her claim responsibility.
I don’t know how “metadata” can determine succinctly and definitively that the “Prince of Wales took the photo.” This Telegraph piece almost seems to be doing damage control for KP, claiming that indeed POW took it last Friday at Adelaide Cottage in Windsor. If that is in fact true, then it lends credence to the theory of Kate being able to work but choosing not to/holding out for whatever reason.
@sparrow, up above, wrote the perfect note to express the sentiments Kate might be feeling. I am so IMPRESSED! KP should hire @sparrow today!! Heck, I’d hire you 🙂
That made sense before the first car pic, where you can see her puffy face. Also, she hasn’t had any problem with being photographed every time right after giving birth, face tired and obviously without even wearing a girdle since you can see her belly.
It can nothing but cement her future Queen image to equally face at least a group of handpicked photogs showing that yes she’s swollen and put on the pounds but that’s nothing compared with the plight of… yaddayaddayadda.
Unless… She’s severely impaired, deformed or uncooperative and there’s much more than just temporary overweight, a puffy face and perhaps not being 100% physically.
True and, photoshopping out some moon face on a recent photo probably would have been an easy edit and also seen as forgivable and I doubt international press would have killed something like that. It’d be like air brushing out a few wrinkles. THAT is what everyone does. I think if it was just that she was self conscious about the side effects from prednisone, we wouldn’t have this completely fake Frankenstein image that they tried to pass off as an actual photo that William actually took. The fact they needed to Frankenstein a bunch of images and then lie that William took it feels they are “doth protesting too much”. Something much larger is being hidden and to quote Meghan, “somebody just tell the truth!”
Lawrenceville, actually, I’ve been wondering if she’s just refused to cooperate. It’s possible that she’s finally reached a point that she doesn’t want to play the game any longer.
Except no one has seen the Middletons either. There are no pap photos of her going and coming from the hospital. Haven’t seen the kids either. If it was just that she wasn’t seen would be one thing. But all of them disappearing at the same time is what brings a lot of theories out. Plus the timing is off for her having plastic surgery. They were supposed to go on a trip to Italy wasn’t it? I don’t think she would have scheduled plastic surgery before that. She would have waited. And probably even left the country to have plastic surgery. To avoid all of this. It’s more than just her missing.
Seriously, to use public photos and hope no one finds out about the photoshop means he has no photos of her because he doesn’t see her or live with her. I’m sure she has tons of selfies and pics of herself on her devices. Why use the ones that are public? Because they have no access to her phone and Kate is 😵 , or ☠️ or locked somewhere in the london tower and eggplant prince willie cant figure out the password to her Iphone to get exclusive pics
I guess it *might* be possible, but in my past experiences, prednisone is usually only used in orthopedic and neurologic surgeries, bc it can impair wound healing. Staples and stitches are foreign bodies and you want those out asap, for scar mitigation and infectious reasons.
Medically (rather than surgical), prednisone has *lots* of applications for many diseases- I’ve taken it myself for my asthma.
I believe she’s been very ill and had surgery. I also think that she’s suffering mentally because of the effects of that surgery. I’m thinking a colostomy bag, temporary or permanent. She’s a very vain woman, has dieted herself into oblivion to please W for years, created this Disney image of the perfect princess so it would be a tough thing for her. Also, W isn’t the type to be with someone who has ongoing health issues, IMO.
As for the touted divorce, I don’t know. They’ve often looked miserable together for years, even before engagement.
I don’t know why everyone is assuming she is on steroids. It’s not routine to take them after surgery, and they’re a short term solution anyway. Steroids are associated with increased infections so they’re best for things like getting bouts of inflammation under control, typically from allergic reactions, autoimmune problems, migraine, acute asthma exacerbations, etc., and not post surgery care.
It’s not at all uncommon to put on a little weight when you feel like crap and can’t get up and move a lot. That’s probably why she looks puffy.
I think she’s just put on weight and doesn’t want to be pictured. And isn’t in Britain so can’t be photographed with the children or William. If she was in the country he’d have done photo calls visiting her to get good PR even if he doesn’t care about her. The middletons would have too.
I think the body of the photo isn’t Kate. The legs don’t look like her. They look more like carols, the thighs are shorter. It’s someone else body, Kate’s face stuck on and old photos of the children from the shoot last year when they were wearing those clothes.
I wonder if it was facial/plastic surgery, and she’s either still puffy or looks weird. I just don’t buy the bowel surgery angle, but could be a large ventral hernia repair.
I will be honest. I am not that interested in them or they are not that interesting so they fooled me. Only on second look was I like charlotte’s sleeves look wonky.
Barrett, I just thought they used an earlier picture–I didn’t look at it closely.
@Barrett, it is always funny when people say they’re not interested in a topic and & then read this far down into the comment section and then even offer an opinion. It’s okay to have a guilty pleasure, like following gossip about the royals. I do. Nobody else in my family cares.
I wish I could keep away, I’ve wasted far too much time “royal watching and gossiping”. No one else in my family does. My mother doesn’t know anything, save the headlines on the news regarding our royal family. I tell her stuff briefly and she’s very quick to catch on. She thinks William asked Kate for a divorce and she’s harmed herself or something similar. I’m not sure about that. I think Kate is very ill, which may lead to divorce. Either a colostomy bag from bowel damage (ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s or similar) or a hysterectomy (but that is my second choice). I think she is struggling mentally at this point, being as vain as she is. Though, with that mutton-dressed-up-as-lamb shrew mother of hers, she deserves some sympathy.
I saw best bit on X so far…It said Kate disappeared to get a degree in graphic design and she was just excited to show us what she learned 😂 Im dead
They just need to make the divorce announcement already — and Willard needs to get on his hands and knees and beg his brother and sister in law for forgiveness.
Just announce the divorce already, bring rose out and introduce us to your daughter so we can close this chapter.
Her face has to be an old photo. The first thing I noticed was that her left eyebrow is not as wonky as it has been the past couple of years, so the photo has to be from before she went crazy on Botox and fillers.
Even their cheerleaders like piers Morgan is pissed and many of these reporters are old and they dont seems to understand in this day and age people will rip apart when they try to fool the public. From the photo dropped i said in this site that her face looks odd and many people argued that she looks good blah blah. I think her face is puffy due to medication and she doesnt want appear in public because she is so vain and told palace she wont show her face until she lose those weight and stop taking medication which causes puffy . Thats why the timeline is pushed because its upto doctor to decide when she stop the medication and after that she will go back to her routine and exercise and those things will take time and thats why palace doesnt have clear timeline.
Charlie – I believe the theories I’ve seen on Twitter that her face was lifted from the Vogue cover pictured in this article) and the kids clothes are from the baby bank outing with some photoshopped adjustments. Two different people on Twitter matched her face exactly to the vogue cover, one even calling it pixel perfect (because when you overlay the photos her entire face becomes black as the pixels exactly overlap).
And these are also reasons Pegs would refuse to release the original. Not only is it a Frankenstein image but the original of the children was taken back in Nov.
That and the fact the Vogue photo will have been copywrited by the professional photographer who took it.
You know it was an old photo, because, after it dropped, her “supporters” were in the comment section here, exclaiming how wonderful she looked with a little more weight on her. Yeah, that’s cuz the picture was from before she started ED. I said that it didn’t make sense because her face look puffy, but her lower body looked thin. Little did I know that the face and legs were from two different images — one older, and the other more recent.
She wants her brows thick like Meghan lol or he does…
That’s why he put that photo of Kates /meghans brows in jeccas style lol face in with his kids. Sicko he doesn’t even love her….
CNN announced they’d be inspecting all photos given by KP. Wonder if they’ll tackle the Christmas photo.
What a mess. William is likely throwing her under the bus for photoshopping the mother’s day pic, but if cnn goes back and looks at actual edits she’s done like the grandchildren photo…a full mess.
I looked at that grandchildren photo yesterday (I was up way late into the evening snickering at various Twitter posts–my goodness, folks are funny & inventive!) & I was thinking–Kate was trying to copy that Annie Leibovitz photo of The Queen from earlier, the one where that Tindall daughter was holding up TQs purse (sweet photo). And Kate thought to herself, I have a camera, I’m a photographer, I can do that! And William got his granny to agree to it. But–Kate ain’t no Annie Leibovitz and that is one bad photo, regardless of all the photoshopping she did.
He has truly thrown her under the moving truck here. It would be genius if he too wasn’t such a public embarrassment. I think Keen will subtly be retired from royal life now. Media outlets will forever analyse any picture released, like CNN stated. She won’t be able to handle this latest pressure. Prepare to see a trickle of articles about how Kate is ashamed, embarrassed, defeated, etc.
Willy ensuring she took the blame over a photo he supposedly took told me everything. He has no intention of protecting or defending her. Those days are over, he wants rid of her like a nasty rash.
KP has really fucked up and I don’t think they realize it. Now every photo will be scrutinized and some probably will be turned down for excessive beauty shopping her face.
This along with the uptick of Rose Hanbury profiles has me thinking that they are replacing Kate in real time. What a horror story that lady is living.
Well, it seems that’s easy to do. Just cut out Kate and paste in Rose.
After watching a 30-second YouTube video, I’m pretty sure even I could swap their faces with the right software. Point that everybody seems to be missing here is that if Kitty used a photo someone else shot of her to cover up her home-done photo is that she’s violated somebody else’s copyright. Ditto the kiddos. If I was a rota or other professional photographer I’d be ticked.
She’s released something else, I think, saying she just wanted to make sure her kids looked good! No. You wanted to make sure you looked good, as per always with your editing. And this was no way a slight bit of editing. As said above, this was cobbled together, which means someone else did it, not just W&K. You get to the point where it may have been a phone call to Jackson, a request to make her look healthy, a cobble together of all he’s got, then publish. Do I think she’s going? I think there’s a hell of a lot of tension, perhaps because one wants to play ball with the press and the other doesn’t. There’s a marriage under strain right there. But I don’t think she’ll go. It’d look so bad on William to divorce a sick woman. And she’s fought most of her life for this position.
But what if the entire situation since Dec 28 was caused by divorce talks in the first place?
William ousted his own brother. If he wants Kate out there will be a divorce
there is no way in HELL that Chris Jackson would release this mess. he’s a professional! either William made it or it was some lowly aide. why they don’t blame it on some lowly aide, I have no idea.
this is all very interesting on a technical level, but I think it’s a distraction so we don’t start asking What on Earth is Up with William?!
This is all William. All of it.
CatMum, I recall Omid Scobi saying that Meghan had sent an email to KP staff asking them to kill the lie that she had made Kate cry. KP responded that “Kates name could not be associated with any scandal.” What’s changed? For years Kate has been promoted as an English rose who “puts no foot wrong.” Yet now, all of a sudden, they have no problem associating her with a global scandal? And what about the image of William as the devoted husband who has taken time off from work to care for his seriously ill wife? How does kicking her under the bus comport with this image? How is it that when the photo dropped, he got all the credit for taking it? Yet when the scandal dropped, she got all the blame? How can she be too ill to work, but has the stamina to do a deep photoshop? I have a lot of questions.
Why is KP/William unable to show Kate’s face to the world?
Why go to the bother of showing grainy photos that could be Pippa, manipulate old photos to make them look new, show a photo which shows the shape of a woman, but not her face? Why can’t they show her face?
They appear desperate not to show her face. They need to show signs of life, but can’t. The question is WHY?
I wonder if it’s that he is replacing her and this is a rollout or whether the media is just trolling William as retribution because they are pissed that KP got caught red-handed and made the BM look awful.
Rose would be crazy to exchange her comfortable and aristocratic good life to spend it with a megalomaniac like William. Run far away from him, girl!
This is what many people said that original photo must taken during their baby bank visit and kate used other photos of her kids to add skirt to char , new sweater to louis and vogue image to her head. I mean with our own eyes for the last five years kate doesnt look no where close to that face. That face is pre louis and hair too. For last few years her age is terrible and hagged. Plus all the news reported only metadata of Photoshop not the original date that why kp refused to release the original one.
She’d need to be one hell of a retoucher to add a skirt.
Thats why there is a problem with char skirt line where ap clearly state out.
Honestly the AI assist make stuff like thet easy on a macro scale. The issue is you typically need to go in an do a lot of minute adjustments by hand and that’s where she messed up. It’s the little things she didn’t do correctly and that’s why the edits are so obvious.
It’s the denim skirt Charlotte wore to the baby bank. However, it’s been switched to plaid. Her skirt had side pockets that stuck out a little, which proved challenging for the editor.
Use of an old photo would explain why the children look so giddy. It wasn’t taken after their mom got horribly sick and went into hospital. They have to be traumatized right now. I thought it might be fake because the kids are all doing those open-mouthed horse smiles that they and Kate pioneered last year. It’s bizarre.
Also note the hair and teeth of the kids hasn’t changed in 3 months.
What I can’t wrap my head around:
Scenario: Kate is supposed to be too ill to be viewed by the public, is and will be somewhere recuperating for months under the care of nurses and on drugs.
Yet, she is focused enough at 10 PM, at night, with a bunch of pictures, collaging, editing and THEN is up again in the early morning at 9 something AM to work on the make believe project.
So unbelievable!
Either she is not too ill and well enough or she is on some strong stimulant that gives superpower to the sick and done lost her mind.
Even PIERS is coming for them!
This smacks of some serious desperation. I don’t believe for a minute that was her in the car – a little too “quick” of an “appearance” with such a stupid dropping her off for an appointment excuse. He is frantic trying to cover it – what is IT? – up. She’s left and is not.playing. The silence of the rest of the family is deafening. They’ve cut him loose.
He’s losing/lost the brit press – so many calls on so many fronts for answers. How long does he think he can do this?
If that was Kate in the car, it’s an old photo that they are pretending was from yesterday. Easy enough for William to pick out the same tie to wear to the CW service that he wore in that picture. Instead of coming clean or letting the whole issue quiet down, they are doubling and tripling down on lying and that is going to be their downfall. They should just stop until Kate can actually appear in public and live with everyone knowing they lied instead of trying to “prove” they didn’t.
Even now, if a live appearance happened, most people would forgive and forget. Kate coming out looking all kinds of bad would make an “are you not entertained” moment, bringing the public back on her side.
Pinkosaurus, I’ve already seen people dissecting the car photo saying it’s from Christmas (ride to or from church) and also photoshopped because the brick outside the car and through the glass don’t match.
It’s wild to me how bad they are at this. And how much of a megalomaniac Pegs is to just think he can do whatever he wants and won’t be questioned. I guess that’s how his entire life was up until Harry left, so that makes sense. But damn, he’s such a walking disaster!
@SussexWatcher, that pic, of them in the car, is all over twitter this morning and they are focusing on the brick. I tried to search for pics on line, but in the end – can we really trust anything they show us???? I feel like we are living out Plato’s Allegory of the Cave – questioning EVERYTHING.
It’s also curious to me that the daily mail was more than happy to publish that photo since it was just last week where they claimed to wouldn’t publish unauthorized pictures to respect her privacy.
Molly, I was looking at lots of photos of nanny Maria and think it could have been her. Possibly.
If it actually is Kate, something is still weird about that photo, besides the fact we can barely see her face. There are either weird artifacts along her neck and jaw, or something very odd has happened to her face. I went to see the Daily Mail page that had the least degraded version of the photo and even there her neck has something that looks like a mole or weird image artifact.
I just hope she’s well. I miss the good old days, once Meghan and Harry got safely established in Montecito, where I could just come here and laugh at Kate’s buttons obsession and Sophie’s Hee Haw inspired fashions. William was just a grumpy git clenching his jaw and fists in the background and Camilla was staggering around in the shadows.
There are innocent children mixed up in this mess so I don’t like the ominous tone this all is taking.
Fascinated by all of this and unsure where to land but… “Schrodinger’s Kate” is an absolutely hilarious screen name!!! Thanks for the extra laugh!
I’ve seen some Twitter photoshop experts, god love them, say that the woman in the car is Kate, but the photo is from Christmas Day, 2023. Same turtleneck and hat, etc, and Bill is wearing the same tie he wore to the Commonwealth service. The bricks in the photo are completely different thru the car window as opposed to above the roof etc. KP/Bill just can’t help themselves. At this point I think someone is trolling us peasants, hard.
I didn’t even bother to look at that image more closely because I can’t imagine that they would attempt something like that. That image does have a watermark on it. The photographer’s name embedded on the lower left of the image. He would likely verify it’s authenticity.
I agree, Agnes. I think the car is true. But who knows any longer.
The brick difference is glaring.
Can we please stop with the “even Piers” already? He’s one of those who has done his best to prop up William and Kate, by slagging off the Sussexes’ every mundane, miniscule act. But for William and Kate feeling like they could do no wrong, I don’t think we would be here. People like Piers don’t get to have it both ways. As far as I’m concerned, unless I can see some consistent, constructive criticism directed at William and Kate from cretins like him, please stop promoting his commentary. As far as I’m concerned, he can just sit this one out.
@ Proud Mary,
THANK YOU! Piers Morgan was one of the worst offenders to Meghan and Harry. He can f***k all the way off. He doesn’t get to act now like he is upset at being made a fool by KP. He’s made one of himself by licking the boots of KP and the other Royals for years.
Agreed – but that’s my point. He’s *ALWAYS* pro kate & peg. For him to be going for them is remarkable!
I know someone was suggesting the Vogue cover face was morphed onto the mothers day photo. Ive seen a gif of it and ir does look like it. My only quibble is that K would have to be bloody good at photoshop to get rid of the harsh sunshine on her face. I think we can all gree after this week, she’s not that good on photoshop.
I think the head from this photo and she altered her hair color etc.
https://hellogiggles.com/the-internet-thinks-prince-william-and-kate-middletons-christmas-card-has-a-photoshop-fail-in-it/
Nice catch @JK – This one looks far more likely than the Vogue cover. Remarkably so in my opinion.
I dont think its the vogue photo, because then she would also have had to photoshop in her hair, and I just think that would have been super obvious. But I agree with the common theory that its definitely an older photo, even her hair looks a lot healthier than its looked recently.
I bet she has a complete file of pics from that photoshoot. Like when you just choose a few out of hundreds. It doesn’t need to be the same exact pic, it could be just one of many outtakes that these bufoons liked tommake this mess.
Her veneers look bigger in the Vogue photo, so I don’t think it’s that.
@Ennie: but those wouldn’t her photos to keep, I don’t think. They belong to the photographer.
There was a story being circulated on Twitter and they were referencing a video of the family. Not sure if a video can be used to make a pic with photoshop, but I am not familiar with manipulating pictures.
what was very interesting was that ALL DAY Kate Middleton and Princess of Wales were the top two trending.
I don’t think they’d need to use a direct cut and paste from an older image. It doesn’t matter that her hair looks better because it’s from a before picture when she was healthier – her hair looks better because that’ll have been what she asked for now (and years gone by). I don’t get the sense with current editing that you need to have too much of a correct lift, it’s more a basic lift and then edit onwards. For that reason, I don’t think it’s a complete vogue or air hostess Kate from the other picture; more a composite/rehash. Let’s face it, her professional photos are never Kate, and the photos released to the press from day to day events are not truly Kate, either. The truest Kate images were taken during lockdown when editing was pretty much on the back burner. See her at the garden centre, with pretty much her real face (sun damaged and aged but never truly seen ever) and closer to reality hair (with extensions but no hairdressers allowed to go maxed out). I hope this link works (if not google kate middleton first post lockdown engagement harper’s bazaar. https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/a32922425/kate-middleton-first-post-lockdown-engagement-style/
Even with edited picture her face doesnt look healthier and they definitely changed her face thats why there is weirdness around her zipper.
I don’t think Kate had anything to do with that picture. I think if Kate could utter a word she would have already. Something has gone very badly wrong, and now Willy can’t divorce her because he will look just as cruel as he actually is. I think he is responsible for that picture being made and posted. This is all imo. I do have empathy for her, if what I think is correct. And those poor kids. What a mess.
Yes, I completely agree, Joy. I don’t think she had anything remotely to do with this picture, either sitting for it or editing it. This has been done elsewhere on request by somebody. Perhaps a mess because it was rushed out after all the demands to publish something, anything. I suspect it was a rush job in reaction to her bloated out (realistic) pap shot. Perhaps her vanity sent her into a spin and she wanted a new photo, or perhaps the concern and conspiracy theories about the pap shot forced them in a new direction.
ITA, Joy. I have no hot takes on the photo and how it was made because I know nothing about this kind of photography (even the camera settings on my phone are kind of a mystery to me), but Frankenstein photo I can understand, and that sounds about right to me.
I agree with this. She didn’t edit the photo nor did she issue the apology. Harry told us what can happen to protect William and it involves blaming others.
@Joy I’ve been saying from day one that none of the actions since January 17 have supported a medical illness that just happened. All of it is supported by the idea that something happened to Kate to cause her medical issues.
All of this photo debacle is for one goal: protect William. There is only one thing that could bring down William AND would cause him to allow her to (or demand that she) not show her face and it isn’t some regular ol’ abdominal issue.
@BlueNailsBetty, exactly. I have zero notes for your comment.
And, since we know KP distributed the photo, they are the ones who removed her rings.
Someone on Reddit pointed out that the Kate face image was taken indoors. Makes sense to me. But the Vogue shoot was outdoors.
First, I hope she’s ok. All of this is really strange. I do think she has a right to do whatever she wants (plastic surgery, etc.) because it’s her own business but the cloak and dagger is so peculiar. I feel something happened to her.
As to the Photoshopping what’s been done to the photo is awfully complex. You have to find the hands/elements from other photos and drop them in and blend them. It’s no easy quick task. And there is absolutely impossible that she doesn’t have a staff that does this. Her kind of editing, as an amateur is going to be-put a filter on it-like many people do. And that’s her choice. However, I don’t believe she can just post whatever she wants without some sort of approval process. I can’t imagine she has that freedom.
I really hope she’s ok if only for her kids. I’m hoping it’s just ineptitude at KP.
It seems like it would be great to be her-a beautiful Princess with beauty clothes and jewelry, no real budget, people doing everything for you-but in reality-it sounds like an awful life.
The way you know that this is a cock up of epic proportions is that people who normally don’t pay much ( or any!) attention to the Royals are all over it. Case in point, my husband who is poring over the photo and sharing various theories with me while he eats his breakfast. Unprecedented action on his part!
Agreed, Kate! My husband is also floating theories, even though I think he’s simultaneously disgusted with himself for caring. Aw, look at William and Kate bringing couples together! Ha!
Precisely lol!
Haha this is the royal version of Taylor&Travis bringing dads and daughters together to watch football!
A few weeks ago I went on an epic rant bc my parents thought I was being crazy saying something weird was going on. Well, guess whose parents religiously watch abc tonight with David Mueller and have now come around and after even they did a piece on this. They asked me what I thought was going on and I just said I don’t know!!!! But they’re lying and everything is weird. And they now agreed with me but only bc the handsome Mueller talked about it🙄
My 14 year old finally wants to read Spare and talk about that family. It’s so strange! He could not have possibly cared less before now.
For me, it’s like the love that dare not speak its name. No one is interested; none of my friends, colleagues, family. If I mention her to my partner, he rolls his eyes and says “not that bloody woman!”. Bear in mind, as I’ve bored people with before, he has bumped into her several times and thinks she is the dullest of dull. Ditto his friends. I actually managed to get a few to speak about it. These are men who’ve seen her out and about, skiing. The consensus was, boring, not stand out attractive, one of a type, very thin, she and her sister jostling for attention amongst the men, hanger on to William, crap skier (the snobby implication being they never had enough money to seriously ski from the moment she started walking). So, it’s a no go chat area for me.
On ABC news they said that BP (not KP) refused to release the picture.
Sparrow: I feel the same way, I have no one to talk to about this– I feel as if I have witnessed a serious crime but no one believes me.
Yes-when even my husband has heard about it and is commenting about it-I know it’s gone beyond the basic royal gossip stage. The first thing he said was, “Her head looks weird-it’s taken from another photo. The scale is off.”
LOL @Kate hubby at breakfast! Guys and gals both love doing those brain teaser games: “Find Ten Things Different” in two identical-looking pictures. This is that on steroids!!
It’s all blowing up in their faces. These two are workshy-they want all the benefits but none of the responsibility of a royal role & have completely outed themselves as liars who have zero respect for the public that funds them.
One thing we can be sure of-something is up with her face. Whether it’s steroids puffing her up or a facelift, that’s the only reason they couldn’t put out a genuine photo (not couldn’t-refused to). Whatever the face issue this just highlights their vanity & shallow outlook-imagine other people on steroids or having had facelifts who’d benefit from Kate being honest that none of us is always perfect.
All they care about is themselves. Nobody’s bullying either-if they want to fund themselves we can all agree that they can have as much privacy as they like. It’s the arrogant wanting both ways & treating the public like fools that is so disgusting,
I don’t think it’s a facelift now. From what you could see of the side of her face in yesterday’s car photo, she still has her same jowls.
I noticed the jowl too, lol. Maybe just had her eyes done.
Looked to me like a wired up jaw.
Hit with a tennis racket while playing? Tripped over kids toy (or a passed out person)?
So they are just straight up calling William a liar about taking this picture last week? 😂😂😂
I broke down and went to the Daily Fail last night to see how they were covering all the shenanigans. I was SHOCKED at the amount and prominence of the articles on this. I’m sure KP wanted them to run maybe one article stating it was just a little bit of photoshop, what’s the big deal, and they did. KP is very invested in making this story go away with no coverage at all of possible.
Instead, the Fail also ran a bunch of other articles including a complete breakdown of every change to the photo and a long article restating everything from the TikTok showing how the photo is actually from last fall. Of course, they took the most negative tone possible pretending to “debunk” it but they still exposed their entire readership to the explanation and fed a ton of traffic to that video 😂😂😂.
Gotta think they are salty about William stating he isn’t going to do what the DM tells him to do.
All things considered, my most likely theories currently are 1) obviously separation but also an ‘incident’ DV related / lovechild related 2) literally nothing wrong eith Kate at all, and this is all a dleiberate distraction to divert attention from a much worse story about the royals. Kate is just the distraction and scapegoat. 3) they used a fairly minor medical issue to extend her time off and use it to also g3t facial tweaks, which went wrong.
Lots of the other theories have merits, but that’s where I’m at at the moment.
I would not deny #1is my guess.
She hides her FACE. Surgical belly not.
I’m just waiting for “oh! That’s the picture we released? That was a mistake! Oops! Meghan and Harry affected our mental health” statement. lol
I’m very surprised they haven’t already tried to pin this massive f up on Harry and Meghan so far. But I’m sure it’s coming.
If they ever do divorce, they are 100% spinning it as the stress from Harry and Meghan.
Even if this happened the way the palace claims, why would he let his wife take the fall after being so sick. I think most spouses would just say it was them. They could have easily said he didn’t know what he was doing but didn’t want to bother her so she could rest. What a prince
Honestly, that’s the weirdest part about this! They had a built-in excuse that William is a total amateur, he was just trying to make his photo look good and don’t worry, next time they’ll get a real photographer etc etc. I would love to have been in the room with the K team while they figured this all out: “No, let’s just say that you took the photo, but then you made your sick wife do all of the other stuff. Perfect!”
I can see why they wouldn’t implicate the heir🙄 but they could have easily blamed it on an unnamed palace aide. William is very specifically blaming Kate. And yeah considering she’s supposedly in recovery, it’s cold as hell.
Lol – “likely not AI-generated” – yeah, because AI contains the word intelligence.
Next KP will tell us that Kate took up collage and jigsaw puzzles while recuperating. Maybe throw the kids under the bus, too – “The children loved helping their Mum to create this special Mother’s Day ‘card’.”
Many are already jumping in and saying, “oh you know how kids won’t stop moving and it’s SO difficult to get a good shot so she had no choice but to combine several photos. What’s wrong with that?” And while she’s at it, just plonk in a cover shoot photo of her face from 8 years ago. Why not.
Such a stupid argument – they’re not babies. Even Louis isn’t a toddler anymore. Maybe if they were in a long photo session with a professional, but they can sit still for two seconds while their father takes a candid shot.
As for “what’s wrong with that?” – cut and paste is a fake photo and they presented it as real, that’s what’s wrong.
I feel like most people are saying that type of thing. I’m surprised that people believe the abdominal surgery story at this point. I think the press doesn’t fully believe it anymore.
We get professional family pictures every year and have since my youngest was 3. It’s not that hard to get a family pic with everyone looking at the camera. the photographer we use always somehow manages to get more than one, lol.
I am so annoyed by that defense. Like ‘poor Kate she is just trying to make a nice photo for yall!’ No. If that were the case, we would only see changes in a couple of spots. I too have kids this age and it’s really not difficult to get a good shot of them. They are all in assigned places, nobody is next to a sibling (ie no pushing), they aren’t toddlers AND they are used to this kind of thing by now!!
I wonder if Peg knows he’s an international embarrassment again? He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Anyone else feeling hungover since yesterday?! I’d be amazed if I have written something like “no one drops off a seriously ill person” into an email. Going to bed last night my partner kept asking why I was giggling. I said “Uncle Gary’s casa de bang bang…and if you want to know, ask someone called sussexwatcher”. I was knackered.
ps not written something like. I told you – I feel Kate Middleton’d out.
The Fail is insisting William took the pic over a 40 minutes time frame last week. Sure, Jan.
Kate is dressed like j e c c a on the vogue cover
Agree. I subscribe to Vogue and remember thinking that when it hit my hall floor and I opened it. Blatant.
Lmao 🤣🤣🤣 Twitter/X users are posting hilarious memes of the image and having a laugh at WanK’s expense. Derangers are pissed at the media. The media is pissed at KP. All these different professionals with no vested interest in the royal family are saying:
– Kate is lousy at photoshop
– KP is a disaster and full of bs
– worst PR ever, but it’s probably Will’s fault
– UK press is a shit show
– how catastrophic it is to have a mandatory kill notice by the serious news agencies. Again, UK press is a shit show.
This was such a stupid mistake from KP – Kate has been so hidden for the past several months that any official “recent” picture of her was going to draw scrutiny. this was not the time to make a Frankenstein of an image. and the stupid car pic yesterday didn’t help.
I was of the opinion that this picture was from November, and they just made some tweaks, and refused to release it because the metadata would reveal the date.
But now I don’t think so, because the edits are so weird – why is the tile on their porch wonky, why is Charlotte’s sleeve wrong (if they were just fixing some colors etc). It really does seem like they cut and paste from different pictures to make this one picture. It doesn’t seem like they just cut and paste Kate over William for example.
I think this is from nov and that tiktok beautifully break down what went wrong. The slice and dice is probably added skirt and new sweater to louis and new head to kate. Thats why they refuse the original because the original is from baby bank and date will get them in trouble. You can clearly see manipulation in char extra added sweater and new skirt raised red flag with louis sweater design being wrong and kate head doesnt match. Because all the kids wear the exact same outfit , its impossible for the family to wear the same clothes again with exact shoes , sweater , jeans etc.
It’s not impossible for the family to wear the exact same clothes. It’s not likely, and its probably not what happened, but its not impossible.
I think this is from nov and that tiktok beautifully break down what went wrong. The slice and dice is probably added skirt and new sweater to louis and new head to head. Thats why they refuse the original because the original is from baby bank and date will get them in trouble. You can clearly see manipulation in char extra added sweater and new skirt raised red flag with louis sweater design being wrong and kate head doesnt match. Because all the kids wear the exact same outfit , its impossible for the family to wear the same clothes again with exact shoes , sweater , jeans etc.
Everything about this is so weird and unnecessary. They didn’t need to post a Mother’s Day picture at all. Or the post could have been a hand-drawn Mother’s Day card from the kids.
But it’s like they were trying to correct all the blunders of the past several months in one swoop. William is totally involved – see, he took the photo! Kate is totally alive – see how well she looks? The kids are totally ok and happy – see how they’re grinning? Everything is happy family at KP!!
One thing I think we all agree on here is that the photoshop skill level required to create the Mothers Day Frankenphoto is beyond Kate Middleton level. Regardless of when the original image (or images) was (were) taken, there’s no way Kate doctored this photo herself. (Pretty sure Wills didn’t take it, either. What a JOKE.)
Wouldn’t using her headshot from the Vogue cover magazine be tantamount to some kind of plagiarism? Kate or whoever did this shoddy Photoshop job didn’t attribute the original photographer who actually took the picture…
Oh right. We weren’t supposed to know about the Photoshop job! Oops! 😂😂😂
It absolutely amounts to plagiarism but obviously no one is going to go after the royals for that.
The KP team seems totally uncalibrated to existing with any pushback whatsoever. How is it possible they have messed this up so completely? I’m no expert, but I have to think that any PR person in the corporate world could have done significantly better here.
And what will the implications be for the royal family moving forward? Nobody will ever trust Will and Kate’s team again. How will they be effective as head of state?
Exactly, there are sycophantic amateurs who are not good at their jobs (Meghan realised it early on), then add to that having to “stand up” to William who thinks he is a PR genius, the recipe is a disaster.
Whatever the true story is, lying to the public and trying to ‘release’ heavily edited photos to prove everything is hunky-dory is a huge mistake. All the Royals have is public opinion. UK citizens pay for this mess every year, and if it is seen to be nothing but drama and lies then they will turn on them, very quickly. Everyone was very forgiving when the Queen was still alive, but they are far less forgiving now. Don’t lie to the people paying for your mansions, and don’t create vacuums of information, causing rumour-mills, which you then immediately attack. If William doesn’t want the public to be interested in him or his family then he can get off the public pay-roll and do a normal job instead.
she’s already blaming her children for it, there’s statement in the times via DM that she wanted to make the children look good. yeah right . so her kids are that ugly that she can’t release the original pic? 🤨
‘Kate is said to have felt that honesty was ‘the best policy’ and wanted to ‘own up’ to the Photoshop blunder. The Princess felt ‘awful’ about the picture and had been trying to make it the ‘best it could be’, insiders told The Times – adding that she was ‘thinking of her own children when editing the picture, hoping that they looked good for their own sakes’.’
Wow, first they blamed Kate, probably thinking that people wouldn’t go after a sick woman. It didn’t work, so now they are putting it on the children. That is just ugly.
The children being scapegoated is disgusting.
Agreed, the kids should have no part of this.
KP needs to come out with something truthful or STFU until Kate is ready for prime time.
I’ve got a feeling Shawna she never will be
@Liz – I’m definitely on Team Conspiracy but have started to feel the bad juju from how many times I’ve typed out my exact speculations. At this point I’d love this just to be about Kate’s vanity and we can go back to counting buttons.
Shawna: me too. I don’t want any of this to be true, but I can’t help what I see, what I think, though I am trying to just suspend it all, wait and see what Easter brings…What bugs me: if they had said nothing, just nothing at all, back in January, then put out a nice generic note on Mothers Day, no one would have said anything. And they could have left the kids out of it just for this year, eh?
This picture of Kate and her kids is being memed all over the place. They’ve already involved the kids in this dishonest mess and they’re already scapegoating them. Honestly, I wish they had photoshopped a pic of Kate and her mom or Kate and William or Kate and some get well cards and not included the kids. Bc this sucks for them. Truly.
It’s not Kate blaming her children, it’s KP and William throwing her and the kids under the bus. I doubt with the last fibre of my being that she had anything to do with this disaster, it’s a coverup upon coverup of 1) the original event that caused her disappearance; 2) William’s involvement in it; 3) William and KP’s ham-fisted bumbling in trying to show “nothing’s wrong here, nope, everything’s fine, Kate’s fine, I’m fine, the kids are fine” and it all blew up spectacularly. Kate’s nowhere near this mess, she’s clearly hiding out and holding out for whatever she needs to get her and her kids’ lives back in order.
What I don’t get is, this is all so unnecessary. Even if they felt they had to release a “new” photo of Kate, the only person they may have had to edit in would be Kate – the rest of the photo should’ve been all one image. I don’t understand how they didn’t have a photo of the three children they could’ve used without having to edit full outfits on them, it’s just all so weird and unnecessary. It’s like they were trying to create a Where’s Waldo effect to keep drumming up speculation.
The real tell is the photo released AFTER this one, the side-profile-closed-window-moving-car-weird-brick photo – releasing that one was completely unnecessary and anyone with a functioning brain could’ve told them that would only increase speculation. So to me, they’re trying to do this.
It could just be as simple as Will punishing Kate by having the internet mock her in a way that Mrs. Who Are You To Talk About My Hormones would find particularly humiliating, but it’s also possible they’re giving Kate a bit of the spare treatment to drum up distraction for something else. Nobody is talking about whether Charles is terminal, the UK having to foot the bill for another expensive royal funeral and coronation, Will’s fitness, etc. And, with all this drama, all Kate’s royal racist exposure has been buried under a digital avalanche of internet speculation, which is quite convenient if you ask me.
I don’t know – the increased speculation now is “How stupid can they possibly be?” and “We can’t trust anything coming out of KP.”
The thing is that Will may want to divorce Kate, but she hasn’t been divorced as far as the public are concerned. She is also the face of KP. Whether it’s Will’s stupidity and/or malice or Kate’s or the incompetence of their staff – all actions reflect on KP’s reputation and the reputation is now mud.
Also, we’ve been told that BP and KP don’t communicate and we’ve seen that Will has been touting his superior fitness to be king since even before the coronation – so why would he plan to cover up for Charles’ cancer prognosis by making himself, his wife and office look like a bunch of idiot clowns?
To me, this isn’t some deliberate plan – William really is an idiot clown. He doesn’t care about Charles’ PR or his funeral, and certainly not about how much the UK citizens would have to pay. He cares about himself and his reputation – but, as an idiot clown, he screws up everything he touches.
I completely agree that William really is an idiot clown who screws up everything he touches, lol.
But the monarchy is not a democracy. If Charles needed cover, he’d have BP do whatever was needed, and they would have zero qualms about making Will look stupid in the process. And, if Will’s idiocy manages to make everything even messier, then great! We have to remember that this isn’t a concerned father watching out for his son, this is an unpopular boss clinging to his role and badmouthing any potential threats to upper management.
And I’m positive that the global speculation re: KP being untrustworthy or a mess would be deemed preferable to Charles than speculation re: him not deserving a royal funeral or the funding increases set to kick in or all the rest of it. All Charles wants is to be King, and to be cheered while on the throne. If he has to make his successor look worse by comparison, he would do so gladly.
If Charles wanted William and Kate to provide cover for him, there are a dozen ways to do it that would be easier and not call into question the integrity of the monarchy itself, which is what’s happening now. No way is Charles happy that people are saying “can we trust anything the royal family tells us?” The royal family – not just William.
@Sunday – it might be a monarchy, but it seems that William hasn’t bothered to step up in any of the ways that would help Charles. He’s done the opposite, by insisting he has to be home for the school runs and refusing to work and letting Andrew strut in front of the family parade at Constantine’s memorial. All of this makes Charles look worse, not better. Plus, Charles has his own plan for PR regarding his illness and that plan has been working for him and already making William look worse by comparison – why attach William’s idiocy directly to himself?
As for Charles’ funeral and the cost – again, it’s a monarchy. When the monarch dies, you have a funeral and it will cost whatever it costs – there’s no getting away from that. If people want to blame anyone for back-to-back funerals, they can blame Elizabeth who held on to the throne for so long that her son practically had one foot in the grave before he was able to become king.
@Becks1 @Eurydice but this turned into a circus because of Will’s own incompetence – this all would have played out quite differently if Will had held his end instead of flipflopping his attendance at events and everything else he’s done.
All of that makes Will look bad. Why does that reflect on Charles? Will operates his own royal household, none of this even involves BP officially. Charles’ hands are completely clean, he’s free to be above it all and holier than thou with his honest disclosures about his own health. When has the monarch been concerned about making the heir look bad? Protecting the heir in a real way, yes (which they’re doing with Will) but making them not look stupid? Prince Tampon would like a word.
All things considered, they’ve managed to keep the focus pretty squarely on Will, Kate, and KP. The question of “can we trust anything the royal family tells us” is ludicrous anyway – surely everyone should know by now the answer to that is no, but even if you’re truly concerned about that line of questioning, it’s easily headed off by any semi-competent comms with “Charles has been a paragon of honesty with his disclosures around his surgery and diagnosis. He believes that standing on your own as Prince of Wales is a crucial part of learning to be monarch, and is confident that Will can step up etc etc.”
I’m not saying this is definitely 100% all Charles’ plan. I’m saying that, in my professional experience, there’s simply no reason Frankensteining that image was necessary, just like there’s no way they thought a side profile through the closed window of a moving vehicle would stop speculation or that a palace in crisis wouldn’t call a specialty crisis pr agency to come clean all this up if they felt it was necessary.
And yes, to the few of us who’ve been paying attention the whole time, it’s a bad look, but we have to wonder how much worse the truth would look. I’m sure QEII was happier that Charles wishing he was a tampon was splashed across the front pages of the tabloids instead of speculation about Penny Thatchbull’s children, for example.
@Sunday we’ve had this discussion before and disagree, so I’m not getting into a long back and forth here, but this situation absolutely is making the entire monarchy and royal family look bad. Charles doesn’t care about the heir looking bad per se, but when his actions start to reflect on the whole family, its going to be a problem. Not unlike how QEII told Charles and diana to finally divorce bc the back and forth was reflecting poorly on the institution.
I think part of Charles is gleeful that William is being dragged so thoroughly, but part of him is also livid with how this is playing out.
@Sunday – I guess I’m confused because your original post said that all this unnecessary stupidity was intentional in order to draw attention away from Charles’ illness, the cost of a funeral, Will’s idiocy, Kate’s racism, etc., etc., and now you’re saying that this whole mess is because of William’s stupidity (with which I totally agree.) But, if this was an intentional plan, it was stupid from the beginning and unworkable no matter who was supposed to execute it.
The issues of Charles’ and his possible demise are being handled by Charles – so far, logically, calmly and effectively. No need for William there. Kate’s illness has superseded any talk about her racism, so there’s nothing to cover up there. And discussions of William’s fitness to be king won’t be shut down by his refusal to work, or by blather about school runs, or by radio silence about Kate. So, none of this reads as an initially good plan that William screwed up. But it certainly reads as a months-long freak out with zero control..
Exactly Sunday. For some reason they have complicated this whole situation to the point of absurd
Perhaps that was the intention Sunday. But it has morphed into something far bigger because now the credibility of the monarchy is being questioned by the world.
It’s not just the royal institution’s credibility being questioned, but the UK press for accepting the photo without verification like a professional news agency should.. (Quite a few posters explained that you can fudge photos on your private instagram account, but when you send photos to news agencies for distribution, which have quite strict guideline to prevent fraud, it’s a different ballgame.)
So this SNAFU is bigger than the Palace. It brings into question how reliable or truthful is the British press when covering the royals. That is what the world is talking about. Once people are starting to question what gets put out by the Rota, the monarchy loses credibility and legitimacy. People can’t trust what they read or see.
@Becks: agreed. Charles has always been jealous, first, of Diana, then his own sons. But he would also be livid at the scandal this has created, damaging the reputation of the institution. He would want W to step up, and forgo some secrecy, neither of which he has done.
He’d be livid at the scandal in HIS reign…..so early in His reign.
Lizzie ordered he and Diana to divorce when it became too much for the monarchy. Who’s to say he won’t do the same to Billy and Bones?
Right, but it was a different era when Charles and Diana divorced; and QEII has always been beloved by her “subjects”. She had no reason to be jealous of anyone, though she might have resented Diana’s popularity behind closed doors.
Charles is a different kettle of fish. If it leaked that he was behind the divorce of W&K, the public would turn on him in a flash. They would accuse him of being jealous of his son and doing it at Camilla’s behest because she is jealous of Kate.
The arrogance.
For all the to’ing and fro’ing above, you have encapsulated it in two words. Whether people think she did it, someone else did it, it’s a composite or direct lift – doesn’t really matter. There is such hubris on show here, ie we can publish this and you’ll all be satisfied, like breadcrumbs on the floor for hungry pigeons.
I agree but I also think that whatever staffer did the editing did a poor job on purpose. He or she wanted the mess out in the open and wanted the picture to create more questions than it did answers.
The date issue is hard to figure out, as every time you put the image into Lightroom or Photoshop that date appears in the metadata. It’s reading last Friday because that is the date that she began editing it. It may also be when she took it, but not necessarily. It is easy to rid an image of information, so when it was taken we may never know.
I’m starting to agree with you @Elvira, Kate is the hand behind the photo mess. If it were someone else that person would already be identified and pilloried.
Yeah she definitely is.
Unless it was William? Maybe he decided this weekend was the weekend to learn photoshop lol.
But let’s say it was Kate. Let’s pretend for a minute that this played out the way KP is saying it did – William took the picture, maybe Friday afternoon, and Kate played around with it a bit (“a bit” being an understatement, lol.)
But then Kate sent the photo to their team for distribution. So this wasn’t like Kate plopped an old picture of her head onto this photo, said “that looks good!” and released it on IG. Her team did that. Presumably William also approved the photo.
And they all had to know it was fake, because Kate does not currently look like that. They know what she currently looks like, how her hair was styled that day, everything – William would know what the picture he took actually looked like – so they all knew this photo was fake and thought “yup, this the perfect time to release a fake photo!”
I’m laughing at the idea that this was the weekend William decided to try out photoshop. Maybe!
I posted yesterday that I thought it wasn’t photoshop, because it was so badly done! But it WAS on photoshop and was also badly done.
Then, whoever novice sent the file to PA (Press Agency) left it with the metadata! Data showed the work around the face, done on a Mac, then saved twice in Photoshop on Friday March 8 at 9.54pm. And again March 9th at 9.39am.
You can ‘take’ a photo on a date and then use that file as a canvas to put further on images (taken at any other date) into the canvas.
They worked on the image/s on photoshop, all Friday, saved the work. Then, worked on it again on Sat morning!
Interesting that the media reported that the image file sent to Reuters did NOT have the photoshop metadata, which means that file was probably exported (correctly if you want to hide the data) to another file/system with a bit of changes etc. They sent different files to diff agencies.
Whoever photoshopped the image didn’t know how to photoshop well and did not not understand basic image processing.
Other images like the finger missing on the Christmas card, or the old Queen and Duke in the garden spliced together … has a similar style of fingerprint!
My theory is whoever did the edits knew full well what they were doing and did it poorly on purpose to draw further attention to the whole mess.
I wonder if William is satisfied that he and Kate are finally international news sensations.
As someone pointed out on Twitter, this is exactly the kind of drama that sucks in people who don’t really care about the royals, but enjoy fun water-cooler speculation.
It’s low-stakes for most of us, and so rich in memes, that this could go on for days. William’s screwup here is epic.
Okay I will explain why these agencies kill that photo because head cutting is huge no no. For example if that person is pippa and head is chopped and attached as kate is manipulation and these photos are public record and this is deceiving people. Thats why they order the kill because without original they cant prove that person sitting there is kate middleton. She cant cut the person head and attached from different photo . She cant cut camilla head instead added queen liz and said to public she is alive or even you cant attached liz from 50s face to 90s body and fool the public look how young she looks. This is deception and kp is behaving weekend at barneys.
Thank you, jk, for the info. Can you or someone who knows about agencies clarify something I saw on the AP statement “remove all copies…slugged ROYAL Kate”. I have never heard slugged in this context, and when I tried to look up its meaning I kept getting garden advice on slug control. Now, it may be the most basic English verb ever, but I’d love an explanation in this context. Exposing my ignorance but expressing my Thanks in advance.
Slug line is a way of describing a story or image quickly. Like ‘Royal, Kate’ as an abbreviation to name, find the text or image quickly on a search. Often it’s when it’s going through the process of writing or publishing.
I think in journalism it’s something like a tag. Photos and articles have a short cut name attached to them – so, here it would be all copies with the tag ROYAL Kate.
Ahh, that makes sense of it. Thank you to both.
The memes doing the rounds are hilarious .I almost feel sorry for her .
She must be mortified by how this has turned out .
Karma is a bitch sometimes .
My favorite is the one with Kate and the kids superimposed outside Four Seasons Total Landscaping (where the infamous Trump presser was held in 2020).
It was posted by the landscaping company LOL.
That makes my day. Four Seasons’ Twitter feed is wonderful.
😂 I love this!
Four Seasons Total Landscaping: the gift that keeps on giving.
It’s William and KP who are mortified because they’ve been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Kate’s probably angry as hell she was thrown under the bus but laughing at them because this photogate has been such a huge blunder and the whole world is covering it.
What’s sort of sad is, in taking the blame for this, she’ll never be trusted as the skilled photographer she made herself out to be. The serious amateur who published Still. All she has now is her plonk plonk piano playing.
It is particularly nasty to have her one (1) personality trait stripped from her so publicly.
What I’m noticing is that William wanted to provide a photo of Kate with the kids but FOR SOME REASON Kate wasn’t available for this photo so it was cobbled together from various photos. Then the next day Willy was in the car with a brunette who would not turn her face to the camera.
In short Kate has not been seen in public since Dec 2023. If a welfare check hasn’t been done yet it will take place soon. While Chuck and the Co-ho are probably enjoying watching Willy flounder with this situation they better step in soon and help him right this ship. If something happened to his daughter in law and his heir has been hiding it he will receive blowback. After all Chuck “visited” her when they were both in the same hospital, Willy is his son, and he is the King. The buck stops with him.
IMO she is at home recovering. In terms of a welfare check, seeing multiple doctors and nurses, which I believe she is, will be on record, even if it’s just her medical file. She is either too ill or too vain (who can blame her, feeling that crap) to be seen outside of that. Now, that there is their own goal – not understanding/foreseeing “their public” would demand to see her.
The other thing is that I don’t think people would even be “demanding to see her” if all the other weird stuff didn’t happen first. She could have just put out a message thanking everyone for their well wishes earlier on, and/or done a picture of homemade cards the kids made or something. The absolute radio silence and then all the other weird stuff is what had all these conspiracy theories and people questioning if she was even alive / conscious, which is what basically forced the palace to do a picture like this now.
Does anyone honestly think “Kate” was at home altering photos? That would mean that she and William are working together in this mess and that is just not happening. I think this is a “Charlene” situation and Kate is somewhere else, whether its in Scotland at Balmoral or somewhere else in Europe. Whatever happened to Kate is really bad y’all.
I agree, Kate had nothing to do with this mess and she is somewhere away from Windsor and KP. It couldn’t be more obvious that William is covering up something awful, so awful that his own family is shunning him, and Pa is giving him enough rope to hang himself.
Jade: yes, and Willy is proceeding to hang himself. The day of reckoning approaches.
The PR people are simply inept because everyone would have realised immediately that doubling down with the lies is not a good strategy. They are incapable of dealing with anything that isn’t praise and have no idea what to do with a global press that asks actual questions and scrutinises them. They’d rather ruin the institution’s credibility than course correct.
When will Harry and Meghan get blamed for this mess?
There are commercial ads on tv with smartphones taking multiple pictures and people can then select which part of which photo they prefer and just assemble them together. Now, in this situation they are being so shady about it that they can even use that excuse anymore. They just “it’ll be fine” that situation and it got so much worse.
This is what I find so hilarious: Pegs, the RF and the British media still have fantasies of “British Empire”. The rest of the world knows the Sun has set on that foolishness, but many of those on Salt Island have yet to get the memo. Pegs honestly believes he is the future King of the World. He’s not going to course-correct. He’ll continue to lie and obfuscate until the whole mess caves in on him. Because he truly believes that he’s god’s chosen one.
What fascinates me is the utter silence from Charles.
You have two competing palaces. One king. A FK who’s financially independent.
Chuck can’t control Willy. I’d bet Chuck thinks FK is making a total as* of himself, so I’ll sit back and look kingly.
Both men are self-serving idiots. They can only manipulate things to suit their self-interest, not to preserve or enhance the monarchy, the institution. Elizabeth might have been a good Queen, but she raised two useless idiots to be king. That’s her legacy.
I think this whole thing is actually really simple. They wanted a photo out of her, they being press or palace, she said no I look like shit. They took one of her looking crappy and put a nice airbrushed photo over it. Why didn’t they just airbrush her current face? well she looked puffy in the Carole photo, so i guess that is why. I think the other messed with bits is them just getting carried away tweaking the photo, and no i don’t think she was the one doing it. I think, as always with these people, it’s not that deep. They are just dumb and egos are too big. They make a mountain out of a mole hill because of it. I don’t believe the divorce stuff, I don’t think she’s sicker than they say, she just looks like she’s recovering from some sort of surgery abdominal or other and doesn’t like how she looks. She will stay out of work until her face is back to normal. They only thing i think is weird is the lack of ring. She wears that thing scuba diving. You’d think she’d at least wear her wedding band. And i don’t buy well swollen fingers, well no her fingers look normal. You cant obsess over Meghan’s engagement ring not being worn then say nothing of this. I think there is an original photo with a very different kate.
What I don’t understand is why go through such trouble on editing her face if she’s eventually going to have to be in public – it will make it look like a cover up if she ends up looking way different once she finally emerges than she did in this mother’s day photo. The only thing I can think is that she must be banking on eventually looking back to her old self by the time she emerges – like if she’s swollen from steroids/drugs and knows she will be off them for some time by the time she goes back to public appearances? If she was going to have to take drugs indefinitely/long term, I don’t understand why they would go to such lengths to hide her current appearance. People would have sympathy.
Good point. yes, she’s potentially setting herself up for a fall. (i think she does that generally, because people who’ve seen her in real life comment that she looks older). and what the hell will people around her, her doctors and nurses, be thinking? they know what she looks like at the moment! and if i were helping her recover at this point, i’d be damned insulted that she thinks jeans and boots are what people wear after abdo surgery. read posts on here, nutella toast’s and saucy & sassy’s re what they could wear afterwards.
Would William benefit financially from the photo? Is that why he claimed to be the photographer?
my hed iz pastede on yay!
BWAHAHA DEAD. Thank you for that blast from the past!
I read somewhere that an article came out yesterday “soft launching” Rose Hanbury, like Camilla was, back in the day. To prep for the future divorce and moving on with Rose.
I’m in the camp of ” Rose is over ” , if there ever was a “Rose” in the first place. Pardon my “gut feeling” but I think that Rose and David offered Houghton to William as a safe house for trysting. Was Rose around when Wm was there? Most likely but not in the sense that they had a relationship . Was David around? It’s his home so also perhaps yes.
@Libra, Rose’s brother was quoted on tabloids saying that Rose was just being friendly when Kate was away. Will and her were just having friendly dinners apparently. So, I believe, his affair was with Rose. She was close to his home and her husband spends most of his time abroad reportedly. It was probably convenient relationship for both of them until Kate found out and tried to oust Rose from their circle.
I think, the people who didn’t pay attention to BRF before are searching for past rumors, one of which was the affair with Rose. So, the papers looking for clicks are taking advantage of that. I don’t think, Rose is stupid enough to leave her peaceful life with a husband who spends most of his time abroad in order to join BRF. They can’t offer anything of value to someone like her. She already got money, family name, titles. That’s why Will couldn’t find an aristocratic girl to marry him.
Either Kate is recovering from one helluva face lift or something very serious is going down. You mean to tell me that a woman who stood on the steps of the lindo wing with a fresh blow out, just hours after giving birth, 3 times, can’t pose for a pic with her kids?
Or the Kate who set up the whole glam photoshop at Prince Phillip’s funeral of all places couldn’t bother to turn her head in that recent car pic?
Ok if she is taking Prednisone, I think I can see what could be going on. Pred has horrifying side effects. It’s not just a puffy face. In some cases….. Well let’s just say it is stressful. I know someone who had to be hospitalized for temporary psychosis that was connected with Pred side effects. I feel sorry for Kate
And this would also explain why they decided niot to bring the children to the hospital for a visit. It would be very traumatic for them to see what their mother is going through.
You know reading through some of the comments about how these three kids would be too traumatized to see a puffy, prednisone face and can’t stand still for a minute to be photographed makes you wonder how are these children being raised.
If they are this fragile, they certainly aren’t ready to take on anything outside the velveteen padded walls.
Child experts must be scratching their heads at their development, or lack of development. Personally, I think it’s using kids once again to cover up the adults’ nonsense.
@catnip: 100%. These children are supposed to be raised to be in unelected high public office. They won’t be ready for it if they are being so coddled now.
Are you suggesting they lied about why she was hospitalized?
I was on prednisone for 6 months and never got the puffy face. I was pretty emotional, but not puffy.
I love how the UK press is trying to buy back some credibility after being revealed they’ve been lying for the monarchy. Hahahah!
Now we get all these forensic fine tooth combing actions a day late, after the foreign press outed this shamble. It’s pure English Masterpiece Theater. Maybe the royals will trot out Cate Blanchett or Judy Dench to be their lipstick on a pig again.
I think it’s hilarious that THIS has turned out to be the zeitgeist of our times for manipulated and AI generated images in the media.
I screamed with laughter. People have too much time on their hands.
https://x.com/QueenRMade1/status/1767364997456494980?s=20
Ded 💀
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Oh my freaking heck! 😂😂🤣
😂😂😂
I can admit I LOL’d but I feel so terrible for the kids. William and Kate have always used them as shields but this is so unfair to them.
Oh to be a fly on the wall in Montecito right now. I imagine that H&M are horrified if not surprised at this. Their departure and Harry’s insistence that they would not have stopped until Meghan is dead are proving prescient. This is a Britney Spears or Shelly Miscabige level situation.
I thank god they are not in the U.K anymore because whatever will did to kate , Harry would have been blamed/jailed for
I wouldn’t be surprised if William beat the daylights out of her finally and they can’t get her face back to normal. I think it’s why she disappears for months at a time.
And that’s why no one in the family wants to see him or be around him, if they can help it.
My best guess: I think they took this photo in December expecting to release it in 2024, just like they release old photos for their Xmas cards. But Kate was more ill than they anticipated and, knowing the public started asking for proof of life, decided they had to disguise the fact that the photo was from December, hence the photoshopping to change their clothing.
That doesn’t make sense. They didn’t have to use a recent photo and say Willy took the photo last week. They could have used an older photo that wasn’t a composite and used that. Keeping things simple for a Happy Mother’s Day to Kate. Or use the kids’ photo.
Now, as for proof of life, that’s a different story. So it makes zero sense to use an old photo from last year and disguised it as a recent photo taken last week. It’s a fake photo. Because by doing so, Willy just fed to the conspiracy that all isn’t right with Kate and he’s controlling the narrative here.
This is a major, irredeemable FAIL from FK’s office. It speaks to his incompetence, dodgy behavior, and that reaffirms those who think he is hiding something. Whether it’s divorce talk, spousal abuse, substance abuse, or whatever, everything is up for grab as to speculations.
By lying, they caused people to doubt KP, the Rota, and this invisible contract. Because if this is the kind of shoddy BS being fed to the public, who’ll want to consume the lies? Plus throwing Cathy and her progenies under the bus only will anger her fans.
I was just looking at the photo again, and my god its so bad lol
I’m sitting here working using Photoshop, Paintshop Pro and Midjourney and the quality on the Kate photo is horrifically below my standards and I mostly make DIGITAL SCRAPKITS
So my digital scrapkits are oceans beyond the quality of something a ROYAL PALACE put out for a PROOF OF LIFE IMAGE to major photo services….
I mean….. good lord.
Anyone who is used to Ai and checking images for quality would have seen all the mistakes in a second, and figured out pretty much what they did to get the picture. it took me literal seconds to spot 15-20 pretty big problems when I first saw it.
It’s so bad I almost think they did it on purpose, but they are temu clowns so I think its just because of hubris and thinking WE are the stupid ones.
Oh and it would have taken “her” it wasn’t her, hours and hours to do this.
Looking at the skill level involved, which is medium ish for both AI and PS. I have a couple friends that level and this would have taken 6-10 hours? for them to do.
But then they would have sent it to me and i would have brutally circled all the crappy spots and told them how to fix it, and that it wasn’t up to par to sell for DIGITAL SCRAPKITS because some customers would notice and bitch about it.
I just can’t get over whoever did this was arrogant and up their own A ss and BLIND enough to send it to GETTY, and the other photo agencies
This catastrophe is an indictment of the invisible contract between the monarchy and the UK press. The problem is many royal correspondents have made their career and money off their relationship with the royals. Foreign press hired the same royal reporters to get their views about the royals.
Rarely are these royal reporters ever been challenged by another press. It’s problematic reporting because so much of what gets printed and said is based on hearsay and a “Palace source” and rarely verify by a second, independent source. This is shoddy journalism. YET, the UK press and much of the foreign press has allowed news about the royals to be reported in this fashion. Perhaps, it’s thought that these people are entertainment news, so there’s less scrutiny and need to verify such stories.
There’s a real blurring line which overlaps between the tabloid gutter press and serious news outlets. In the US, you can blame the Foxification of News with its hyper-partisan stance. In the UK, there’s a longer history of this hyper-partisanship. Right wing press dominates the UK press. As a result, lies are much more tolerated in the UK press so the idea of checking the authenticity of such a photo is not standard operating procedure. The way to check in England is through lawsuits. OfCom is fangless and partisan as well.
Someone on twitter said: The Spanish press are reporting her operation wasn’t planned, she was in a coma, intubated and at one point doctors feared she would die. The Spanish press are saying there is a blackout in the UK media on it.
Wow.
After this latest debacle, the UK government will henceforth be heavily involved policing W&K. They and everyone associated with them will have been ‘put in special measures’.
Defined by Wikipedia as
Special measures is a status applied by regulators of public services in Britain to providers who fall short of acceptable standards.
It has gone beyond parody at this point. The only people who are legit asking if she is OK are the Sussex Squad. Her own media do not even care enough about her to find out if she is Ok
They just continue to parrot the now INTERNATIONALLY disgraced KP talking points
That’s what I’m astonished by, no one who is a Kate “fan” on twitter or youtube actually gives a rat’s a ss about her.
I personally hope she is ok and recovers, primarily because she has children. I want them to have a healthy safe mom, that’s what all children deserve.
So where I’m living for all this gossip, I hope Kate’s ok and that William gets what he deserves.
For whatever awful things he has done.
Kate’s fans are too busy on sites like Yahoo’s comment board attacking Meghan and her appearance at SxSW.
But you are right, they are trying to minimize photogate and think the world is basically overreacting to a little photoshopping. They will never admit that FK has a serious temper problem or there’s marital problem. So in order to keep up the pretense all is good, they can’t express concerns about Kate.
I think this video has been altered
🤣🤣🤣
https://www.threads.net/@urban_protagonist/post/C4ZeNAOLTtI
It really is more believable tho lol
BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
https://x.com/LandonJames84/status/1767687606106526135?s=20
My hypothesis is that William, in drunk/coked rage hurt Kate so badly she’s still in recovery. Even a brain injury could be involved. They don’t know how to handle this, and he might be also pressing for divorce, not listening to anyone. Either that, or some severe self-injury and mental breakdown. This all looks terrible.
I agree Rintin. And it won’t be easy to keep it covered in the relentless 24/7 pressure of the social media age.