Kate Middleton’s Mother’s Day Photo:  Princess Reveals She Photoshopped The Snap

I’m sure you’ve seen this new photo of Kate Middleton by now:

The Princess of Wales released the snap through her official social media accounts on Sunday to mark Mother’s Day (which takes place in March in the United Kingdom).  

The picture shows Kate and her three children, visibly happy. The children appear to be laughing at the photographer, cited as their father William. Kate’s sat on a chair, with her arms around two of her kids. It was snapped some time last week according to palace officials.

A caption accompanied the snap, personally penned by the Princess. She thanked the public for their “kind wishes and continued support over the last two months” following her extended absence from public duties due to abdominal surgery. She finished the post by “wishing everyone a Happy Mother’s Day” and signing off with her her initial, C, for Catherine.

The colourful and cheery image was likely released by the couple in a bid to quash the circulating rumours that something is amiss at the palace.  You’ve probably picked up on some of the chatter on social media and forums alike? I’ve heard it all in the last couple of weeks:  that Kate is gravely ill, she’s in a coma, or she’s dead 🙄. That the Wales couple are divorcing and living separately. Conspiracies and purported cover-ups galore! This has broken out into the mainstream thanks to media coverage and newspaper reports. Even members of the public who aren’t usually tuned into royal news have become concerned.  Hashtags like “#whereiskate” have trended on social media…

It looks like the palace released the photo to show Kate’s fine and happy resting at home with her family. And this photograph achieves that. Nice, normal, nothing to see here. Well, unless you zoom in… 😬

Look closely and it’s obvious the photo has been doctored. There are three obvious ‘smoking guns’.  Princess Charlotte’s sleeve is the main giveaway. Look at her semi-transparent cuff! Oh dear.

And here’s another obvious edit, Kate’s jacket and sweater. Look at the zip. It looks like a straight copy and paste of layers on top of each other, but with zero effort to blend them.

The pattern on Prince Louis’s sweater doesn’t look right either. It doesn’t quite line up on the left.  It looks like somebody has perhaps been overzealous with the Photoshop stamp and clone tool here:

Others have argued that there are more inconstancies and flaws too, but they’re less obvious/harder to prove/might have other explanations – Kate’s hand is blurry, Charlotte’s skirt at her hip looks a strange shape. Etc etc/

Sadly, what was supposed to be a pleasant photograph showing the Princess and home with her family has now backfired.

There are people who are absolutely convinced that the photo is AI generated due to Prince Louis’s awkward finger placement (AI is notoriously bad at ‘creating’ hands, but I think the young prince is just bending his fingers backwards in the snap). Others are shocked the image has been doctored and want to know why.

The image has fanned clearly the flames of the conspiracy theorists and amateur detectives alike.  (Plus, spurred lots of discussion in certain factions of the royal watching community that dislike the Princess and her family).

The news story took a life of its own on Sunday evening when leading news agencies noticed the photograph’s inconsistencies. The Associated Press, PA, AFP, Reuters and Getty all ‘pulled’ the photo from their systems due to suspicions of manipulation, some issued a ‘kill notice’ following a ‘post-publication review’. This was an instruction to media organisations not to use the photograph in their reports and to pull it from their articles.

Of course, this escalated the discussion surrounding Kate and her health.  Forum threads, social media posts and video shorts popped up all over the place discussing the manipulation.  WHY did the agencies “kill” the photo?  What is going on at the palace?  Who Photoshopped the image of Kate’s family? Why did they edit it in the first place?  I received several direct messages from friends and family asking the same questions! It caused quite the furore!

So…. why did the agencies ‘kill’ the photo?

It’s not part of some wider conspiracy. Reuters explained their reasoning for issuing the kill notice and withdrawing the photo from their system:

“Reuters picture editors said part of Kate’s daughters cardigan did not line up properly, suggesting that an image had been altered.  Reuters could not immediately establish how, why or by whom the alteration had been made. 

Leading picture agencies distributing news photographs prohibit the publication of images that have been overly edited.”

Reuters

So there you have it, their job is to distribute news images, they don’t distribute images displaying obvious editing as a policy. Their editors spotted the obvious alterations and pulled the image until they had further information/clarification from the palace.

I think the phrase “kill notice” didn’t help, it made the whole situation sound a lot more dire than it was in reality!   A lot of fuss over nothing in my opinion.

So… who edited the photo of Kate? 

The answer became clear this morning.  Kate confessed SHE edited the photo! In another personally-authored message on her official X account, she wrote:

Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day. C

The Princess of Wales

So there you have it, Kate edited the photo herself.

But why? Why did Kate Photoshop the picture?

This hasn’t been explained but I expect I know why:

The photo released on the Kensington Palace social media accounts credited Prince William as the photographer.  I suspect he took 2-3 photos of Kate and his children, and all of them had a slight imperfection.  Perhaps Louis blinked in one, Kate wasn’t smiling in another, Charlotte’s arm looked awkward in the third.  I expect the family knew this picture would make the front pages following Kate’s extended absence and just wanted one perfect shot – so the Princess decided to use Photoshop and blend the best bits from two or more photos together. Edit out the imperfections, if you will.

I don’t think this is unusual – I’ve used Photoshop for years and have done similar in the past. It’s a pretty common technique used by both amateur and professional photographers alike.  Here’s a tutorial on the Adobe Creative Cloud website that shows you one method of how to achieve this in the software:

The photograph and subsequent clarification over its manipulation have not calmed the conspiracy theorists though, sadly. Social media is still awash with a lively mixture of people who don’t believe Kate is in good health, who think Kate didn’t edit the photo herself, who didn’t tweet the message about editing the photo herself, and it’s all a cover-up. I personally do not belong to this camp, thankfully!

I don’t think anything untoward is going on. The Palace have explained that Kate will return to public duties after Easter.  I suspect we’ll see Kate in person with her family on Easter Sunday (just shy of three weeks from now).  Then, I think it’ll be back to business as usual around mid-April when Kate’s children return to school following their Easter break. The new term begins on the 17th of April, so I think we’ll see the Princess back at work on Thursday the 18th,  Friday the 19th, Monday the 22nd, or thereabouts.

Assuming my predictions are correct, I’ll try my best to cover Easter Sunday and Kate’s return to work in April, but I’m due a baby any day now, so will probably have to take some time off over the next couple of months myself (unless this is a unicorn baby that sleeps for lovely long stretches so that I can write!  My firstborn was a dreadful sleeper, so I am not holding out too much hope!).

Oh, I nearly forgot! The style portion of this article! This is Kate Middleton STYLE BLOG after all! Let’s look at what Kate’s wearing in the photo.

Kate’s outfit:

If you’re more interested in what Kate’s wearing than whether or not the palace is covering up some kind of crisis, you’re in the right place (and you’re my kind of person). Here’s what Kate is wearing in the photo.

Let’s start with the bomber jacket. It’s by Bella Hoskins.  

Thanks to MiddletonMaven for this ID. She spotted confirmation on the designer’s Instagram page (before it was deleted!)

The £385 olive green jacket is windproof and weather resistant, yet lightweight and easy to wear.  It features a Nehru collar and hidden zip.  It is quilted inside and features ribbed cuffs.

Bella Hoskyns is a rising talent in the British fashion scene, known for her distinctive approach to countrywear.

Kate paired the green jacket with a navy poloneck and blue skinny jeans (no information on these pieces, sadly). She finished the look with a pair of brown combat boots. They’re a pair she’s owned since 2019, they’re from See by Chloé. Pictured below on another occasion:  

The boots feature a lace-up design, a pull tab at the back and contrasting light brown detailing around the thick layered sole.  The combat boots retailed for $445 at Net-A-Porter.com.

Sadly, you can no longer buy the boots. They’re from a past season.  Looking for something similar?  I have some suggestions/alternatives on this page (scroll down) that are still available now if you want to get the look.

Update:

This evening, some publications have run another new snap of the Princess, taken earlier today. It shows William and Kate leaving Windsor Castle.  Kate is facing away from the photographer, while William looks down at notes on his phone.  It’s reported that Kate as heading to a private appointment, and William was on his way to Westminster Abbey for the Commonwealth Day service.  

According to one royal commentator who spoke to the Daily Mail earlier today, the appearance is a ‘pretty obvious attempt’ to move the story on and show the Princess is ‘up and about’.