Something really hilarious is happening this week. Kensington Palace would actually prefer that people talk about whether or not that’s really the Princess of Wales in TMZ’s video and whether or not Wiglet Christ Superstar will be resurrected in time for Easter. Like, the palace would much rather center all of the conversations on Kate and her appearance. They don’t want to talk about the fact that the Windsors now have zero international credibility and that Agence France-Presse now considers the Windsors’ propaganda to be on the same level as Iran and North Korea. It’s started creeping into royal coverage though, random quotes about how of course the palace realizes that they can’t issue any more photos “taken by Kate,” and that there’s a ticking time bomb if Reuters, Getty, AFP and AP start examining all of the palace-issued photos. The Sunday Times piece in which an “adviser” to William and Kate referred to the media agencies as “hypocritical” for killing the manipulated Mother’s Day image hasn’t helped either.
Right now, everything is centered on the photo, allegedly taken by Kate in the summer of 2022, of Queen Elizabeth II and all of her white great-grandchildren. It was clearly manipulated and edited. KP released it months after QEII’s passing, and it was done as a sort of memorial, not as a proof of life or anything. It was also released as a snub to the Sussexes, because their children were not included. Well, first the Guardian picked it apart, and then Getty added an editor’s note to their archived copy, a note which called the photo manipulated and edited at the source. Now Reuters is bandwagoning:
A second royal photograph issued to the media by Kensington Palace, the office of Prince William and his wife Kate, was digitally altered in eight places, Reuters said on Tuesday after an analysis of the picture by the news organisation’s photo editors.
The picture, released in April last year to mark what would have been the 97th birthday of the late Queen Elizabeth, showed the former monarch surrounded by some of her grandchildren and great grandchildren. It had been taken by Kate, 42, at the Scottish royal residence Balmoral Castle the previous summer, Kensington Palace said at the time.
Earlier on Tuesday, Getty Images flagged to its clients that the Balmoral picture had been “digitally enhanced at source,” without giving further details. “Getty Images is undertaking a review of handout images and in accordance with its editorial policy is placing an editor’s note on images where the source has suggested they could be digitally enhanced,” a spokesperson said.
While Getty, Reuters and other news organisations did not at the time spot any issues with the handout, the examination of the photograph by Reuters photo editors has found that there were eight places where the picture had been clearly altered by digital cloning. Reuters could not immediately establish why the alterations were made. Digital cloning involves copying pixels to either move or mask objects or areas in a photo.
Kensington Palace has declined to comment on the photograph. A Reuters spokesperson said: “Reuters is updating its procedures related to vetting images from Kensington Palace after confirming a second altered photograph. Consistent with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles, Reuters requires that photos meet its editorial standards for image quality, accuracy and reliability.”
It’s fascinating to watch this as a slow drip from the agencies. I realize that Reuters is doing their own in-house investigation and analysis and not just taking Getty’s word or the Guardian’s word for the fact that this one photo has been manipulated, but I have to wonder why all of these agencies aren’t doing what CNN did: announce a review of ALL palace-issued photos. By focusing on each individual photo, agencies like Getty and Reuters are effectively extending the story by weeks/months. Like, just going through my own archives of palace-issued photos, I can see clear issues with photos going back years. It’s funnier the way Getty and Reuters are doing it though – a piecemeal approach to thoroughly embarrass Kensington Palace, especially after William and Kate’s advisor called the agencies hypocritical. Getty and Reuters took that as a challenge.
Photos courtesy of Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace.
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Again, I don’t believe that someone rando got in touch with Getty about Archie’s christening picture, told them it was altered, and Getty labeled it as such before realizing that they had been had. KP pops to mind as a potential source there. And that in addition to all the altered photos is going to get these sites to look at all of the pictures they’ve published. Now that news sites have said that they do not accept such photos, they can’t leave any of them up without labeling them as such. And they aren’t going to appreciate anyone having them go after honest photographers.
Some of us Squaddies called this photo out when they first published it back in 2022. Like me, those with art backgrounds said the lighting was not right and little Louis was added later.
The socalled official photo of KC3, Cowmilla, Willie Leaks and waitey Katie, taken of the foursome who are all in black cheesing it up for the camera at Buckingham Palace, during the QE2’s memorial funeral week was fake, too. Not by AI, but terrible photoshopping skills. The shadows are all wrong, there are a combination of semi soft diffused narrower shadows and soft diffused wide shadows on the foursome. This is not possible in our physical world. This does not occur in the physical world — either lighting cast overall semi soft diffused narrower shadows coming from William and sorta Kate. Or it will cast soft diffused wide shadows coming from Charles and Camilla. You cannot have some people or objects in the photo casting soft shadows while others cast semi soft shadows in the same photo light sources. More telling that this picture was constructed from more than one source, is that the shadow on the right side of William’s face, is a harsh shadow that does not appear on the others faces. Meaning he was not originally in that photo. Kate has a less harsh shadow but one none the less on the same side. She also could not have been in the same photo with William, nor within the same photo with Charles and Camilla. This deduces that the foursome took pictures separately at different times then the photos were married together… KC3 and Camilla seem to be together in their original photo, but Kate and William’s photos were taken at different times in BP then married together by a socalled Photoshop retoucher. KC3 and William’s body position relationship to each other against the railing on the red carpet is sorely off… it would mean William’s taller body would be in a “Z or “Zed” like positioning if you viewed him from the side. Just go back and look at that photo. I am a professional artist and I know what I’m talking about.
Is there any photo of Khate that has not been photoshopped. Archies christening photo, the largest and most dominate person is K, same as in many other photos. Normal aging or abnormal aging, remember her fury when the Danish refused to photoshop her face ? Vehemently denying plastic surgery or fillers, why do her face and teeth barely resemble how she looked when much younger ? Apparently in reality she looks very different to all the perfectly photoshopped photos in the media and those produced by derangers. It appears there is so much fakery around K, it is difficult to know if there is any truth. The children all dark brunettes are trotted out as blonds claiming it is bleaching. I live in the tropics, no one with dark brown hair becomes blond during summer without a lot of help from bleach, spending everyday in the sun lightens dark hair but does not change it to blond. Too many lies, bring trash into the family, you bring destruction. A determined stalker is never someone to marry, nothing delicate or vulnerable about K, she preyed on W until she was the last woman standing. Not a doormat and never has been.
Eh, the worst side effect of this whole photo mess is having to see so many pictures of Khate in jeggings….It’s killing me slowly.
It shows that Kate’s legs are more muscular than those of the farm shop figure.
It means nothing since Kan’t go from fit to unhealthily thin (when you can see all of her ribcage) from time to time. Hard to date anything because of that.
@CC730 — even at her thinnest, Kate just has naturally muscular legs, very different from the woman in the farm store video who has skinny legs that she tried to cover up with baggy sports pants instead of jeggings, which Kate invariably wears.
No, at her thinnest Kan’t has legs that have a gap between them that is enormous and they look like sticks.
It’s rare to actually see them like that because she then tends to cover them with long skirts or pants that aren’t as showy. That’s why sometimes her pants seems to badly fit, baggy.
i know….the jeggings are so cheugy. meghan has been wearing skinny jeans a lot lately and it’s calling jeggings in my mind. straight leg or wide leg please.
They poked the bear and now the bear is letting them know that they are angry and will now use a critical eye on what crap they want to send out to be published. Peg seems to be the one burning down the monarchy with his gold standard PR skills. It’s amazing how quickly this is happening after QEII died. It’s obvious Peg learned nothing from her or Chuckles. He is like a bull in a china shop breaking tea cups and tea pots all over the shop.
What if this whole clownery is about hiding something about one of their kids? They are just so bad at it that they made it all go sideways and explode. What if Kate went to hospital or some kind of treatment with their child and they are trying to hide it for some awful ableist reason? Agh they turned me into a conspiracy theorist.
I just saw another tweet about this same thing and it makes me wonder! If we don’t see the kids on Easter I guess we will know?
I think if that was the case, they would have said so and then they would have been able to milk both of them being out for so long. There’s been no hint of that so I really don’t think it’s likely.
I agree, these two idiots would milk a sick kid for everything it was worth. Forever.
I feel like a can’t predict how they will approach things. We think they would milk it forever if one of the kids had special needs or a health issue. On the other hand the brf have a long history of hiding family members with various conditions.
exactly, all this squawking about where’s kate and yet none of the children have been seen since Christmas and it seems nearly all of these aggregious photoshop fails involve photos of the children.
I also have to consider the royals & rota’s tendency to project their own sins onto the Sussexes, and all the absolutely vicious attacks on Meghan all centering around her pregnancies and her and Harry’s children. If every accusation is a confession…
The rota is seemingly fixated on Kate and they know ‘something’ about W&K that they aren’t allowed to disclose. I don’t think they would be acting this way if it was one of the kids but that’s all the more reason for an independently verified well check for Kate, George and his siblings. It’s not like we haven’t been asking for this since this all began.
Nah the kids are fine. They don’t have lots of photos of them because unlike regulars parents they don’t care or help in their upbringing at all, the nannies are.
Despite having nannies, I very much doubt the Wails *don’t care for their kids or help in any of the upbringing*. They likely do all the fun stuff and give the annoying chores to the nannies.
Since Will don’t live with the kids and Kate don’t seems to know anything about her children (she never has anything to say about them that seems personnal like their favorite sports, food…), I doubt they spend that much time with them.
It also explain a lot of the kids behaviour around their parents.
The funniest thing about this for me is that this is probably the end of Kate the Keen photographer. Like we aren’t going to see any photos from her anymore right?? Please universe. Also are they going to reject all photoshopped photos of her even from the royal photographers cuz every single one is cleaned up to a ridiculous amount.
We all saw her very pedestrian photo skills in the pictures she took in Borneo. She has never been a good photographer.
In one fell swoop she has lost her only hobby. I would feel sorry for her, but she’s horrible.
And that right there is the funniest thing about PhotoGate. It won’t be just Kate’s photos that will be examined it will be all photos of royals being examined.
Professional photographers aren’t going to allow (or will stop allowing) their reputation to be at risk to protect Kate from being seen with wrinkles and less than perfect skin texture.
William done f*cked up and Kate is the one getting hit with the fall out. No more perfect princess pics for her. I hope she bleeds him dry from now on and when the divorce comes I hope she makes out like a bandit and with no NDA.
That’s why I’m convinced this was part of a Kate takedown; it not only completely destroyed the one skill/hobby she’d succeeded in building up, it’s also torching her reputation and leaving her exposed to wider implications (namely intentionally manipulating photos of her children with QEII while her rota pets attacked Meghan for keeping her children away).
Now, I’m trying to parse whether this was a move on Will’s part (torch Kate’s reputation thoroughly enough and maybe the firm will let him divorce her after all), a move on the firm’s part (Kate’s version of bags of money from the bin Ladens being aired out ahead of ascension), or a move on BP’s part (to expose/neutralize KP so that when Will ascends it’ll be the team at BP that he keeps on and the team at KP that’ll have to be cut loose following this disaster).
I actually buy this! This is exactly the kind of strategic thinking Huevo is capable of, “If I make her a laughing stock, they will let me divorce her!”
I agree. And this is becoming much more Machiavellian with each fake photo/video. I hear Jason “The Knife” Knauf is back in the picture at KP. This slow-drip takedown of Kate has his grimy hands all over it, he’s always been a total William sycophant.
Doesn’t she own the copyright to her photos and get paid when they’re used? So … she’s gonna lose an income stream? Ouchie!
In my 50+ years I have never seen ‘you reap what you sow’ happen so quickly!
It is a sight to behold 🥹..
Hello Canada reached out to Getty and they have not placed an editorial note on Archie’s christening picture, that was just the Daily Mail creating a distraction piece. The lengths the palace and its cohorts in the media will go to in order to protect the heirs is diabolical; first they tried it with Misan Harriman and now this. I hope CNN does a huge segment on their findings. As to the pictures under discussion here, I remember thinking they looked staged at the time but once you pay more attention you can clearly see the manipulation, George has definitely been pasted in where he’s standing by the edge of the sofa and there’s no way Charlotte would have been allowed to make that pose if she was sitting between the Queen and Prince Philip in real time.
I have to think at some point they’re going to get sued. They’re trying to drag down all these professional photographers so they can prove Kate did nothing wrong, but those professionals are not sacrificing their reputations at the alter of St. Kate.
Plus, a portion of Phillips’ knee right in front of Charlottes’ dress seems to have decided to take a vacation for that photo?
I’ll give this to them, having Charlottes’ arm in front of Phillips’ torso and Phillips’ leg in front of Charlotte’s dress DOES make it look more real. I would not have thought of that.
Its’s gonna be hilarious when they discover all those wholesome family photos are composites!
I have just always assumed that the photos released by royal families around the globe are portraits…and portraits are different than hard news photography, are they not? I never imagined they weren’t cleaned up in post, or that if Kate was the photographer that she wasn’t messing around with them in photoshop. I mean, the criticism of her for releasing what was basically a composite to lie and convince the world she’s okay and not dead or unconscious and is up and wearing makeup around the house is valid, but nothing else is a news story beyond “the royal family released a portrait for such and such event.”
I hate to defend Kate for anything because I think she’s awful, but all this nitpicking of every photo they’ve ever released is just…beyond unnecessary and a waste of time and energy.
But the point is that now organizations think they did that for more than one picture – adding in people who weren’t there, etc. It’s not about erasing Kate’s lines or undereye circles or other “cleaning up.” It’s about presenting an image to the world as “this moment happened” and that moment, in fact, did not happen.
For the news agencies, it’s not a waste of time but a matter of restoring public trust in them and making sure their own archives are properly marked for posterity.
For the Sussexes, this helps to vindicate their story of how the royals let W&K manipulate the media all the time.
And for the Republicans in the UK, it’s a gift from the skies above.
Here’s a Buzzfeed article that goes into some of the details about what is and isn’t acceptable in using image processing software: https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/pete-souza-kate-middleton-comments
“Every publication like the New York Times, and every news organization like the Associated Press, have strict policies on using Photoshop to process images. Basically, the accepted practices allow a news photograph to be tweaked by adjusting the color balance; the density (make the raw file lighter or darker); and shadows and highlights.
“What’s not acceptable is to remove, add, or change elements in the photograph. That would be altering the content. For example, if there’s a telephone pole sticking out of a person’s head, you wouldn’t be allowed to remove it. Or if someone mashes multiple family pictures together into one, that wouldn’t be acceptable.”
Lululu, I don’t know which Country you’re in, but in the US we do have many credit media agencies. The photo agencies have to have a strict ethical standard because they’re photos are used for news, etc. If they accept every photo thrown their way, they become much like the bm media who evidently accepts anything the brf gives them. It’s especially important now when so much disinformation and misinformation is going around.
The US has journalistic and photographic standards and ethics. Why do you suppose Murdoch owned Fox News is licensed for entertainment and not news? They put out more disinformation than Carter has pills. They also were sued and the settlement was OVER 3/4 of a billion dollars. They have other lawsuit–on asking for over 2 billion dollars. Murdoch gets away with a lot in the UK, but the US is working hard not to let that happen here.
It’s not nitpicking. What she was found out about was editing a photo to add people, or change their positions–for example, changing the alignment of an arm or hand. If you want to consider that nitpicking, you certainly have that right. I will never be a proponent of disinformation.
They should examine their wedding photos. I have a feeling kaity just photoshopped Pegs in there, he probably didn’t bother to show and was at the pub.
Comment of the day!
I think it’s actually William in the frankenphoto. The left hand looks too large to be Kate’s hand. The knuckles and fingers look large to me. And William doesn’t wear a ring, that’s why Big Blue was missing. They either forgot to edit the left hand or couldn’t add Big Blue to the photo. Look at the left hand around Charlotte. It looks like William’s hand. That’s why they can’t release the original photograph.
And the very photo of Kate used as a header here has been taken using a filter. She’s 42 and needs a filter already for wrinkles and jowls … at 42.
Yes, she claimed legal credit for the photos. Was she in the room where the photos were taken?
Probably
Did she take any of the original photos that were mashed together?
Maybe some of them
Did she photoshop those images to create a new image with people who were not in the main photo?
NO POSSIBLE WAY
Did she ask her staff to do that, or did her staff suggest they add people to the photos?
Probably
Is she taking the fall for the staff?
100% she is
I’m still LMAO at how the BR fans have been calling Meghan a “fraud” and using that clip where she jokingly calls herself a fraud, and now look at Kate Middleclass. She turned out to be the fraudulent commoner who married into the royal family and ruined their credibility with the world news agencies. 😂
When the Wales children showed up with obviously chemically-bleached hair, it seemed bizarre at the time. Apparently, someone did not want the Wales children to be the only non-blondes in the Grandchildren photo.