Last Sunday, March 10, Kensington Palace published a photograph of the Princess of Wales and her three children (George, Luis and Charlotte) to congratulate Mother’s Day and put an end to rumors and speculation about the delicate state of Kate Middleton’s health.
Far from achieving its goal, hundreds of users on the Internet detected that the image had been retouched with Photoshop. This edition caused a great media stir that caused the main communication agencies to remove the photograph from their servers.
Social networks became a hotbed of accusations towards the Royal House, which is why Princess Catherine decided to step forward and publicly apologize in person: “Like many other amateur photographers, I occasionally experiment with editing “I want to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday may have caused.”
Far from stopping there, the scandal derived from photography has caused different media outlets and researchers to start studying old photos in search of editions, retouching, etc.
As a result of this process of studying old official images, it has come to light that the baptism photograph of Prince Archie, eldest son of Prince Charles and Megan Markle, also underwent subsequent editing. The Getty photography agency has stated that the portrait had been “digitally enhanced”, something that could not be demonstrated as clearly as in the case of the photo that Kensington Palace uploaded for Mother’s Day.
The photographer in charge of taking the family snapshot in which Prince Harry, King Charles, Camilla, Prince William and Kate Middleton, among others, appear, was Chris Allerton. The image was published in July 2019.
Allerton has decided to publicly deny that his photograph suffered any type of digital alteration and has confirmed that what is being said on the Internet seems to him to be a “pack of nonsense.”
This is not the only image that has been analyzed by researchers. According to Getty, Kate Middleton took a photo in August 2022 at Balmoral in which the late Queen Elizabeth II appeared with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, which was also edited. In this image (as in the previous one), the agency adds a note in the caption with the following phrase: ”The image has been digitally enhanced at the source.”
