Photographic retouching is not something new in images of the British royal family, although it is the first time that one of the protagonists confirms it. Despite the attention that Photoshop has received in the last image shared by Kate Middleton on the occasion of Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom, it is not an isolated case among the Windsors. Rather, it is something common and proof of this is the multiple errors that have appeared over the years in the family’s official posts.
The closest case is an image in which the princes of Wales appeared to congratulate last Christmas. Prince William and Princess Catherine appeared with their children in a black and white image that featured alleged photo retouching. Prince Louis seems to be missing a finger on the hand that he rests on the chair and the thinning or deformation of one of the legs of the youngest of the family is also evident.
Another example that generated suspicions of photographic retouching was one of the last posed of Elizabeth II with Philip of Edinburgh. The image was sent to the media and shared on social networks on the occasion of the 99th birthday of the queen’s husband, but the sharpest Internet users then noticed the abnormal shadow generated by the monarch’s hands and many identified it with a beginner’s technique of Photoshop.
The image of ten children smiling at the camera with their grandmother also generated speculation in the United Kingdom. It seems impossible that ten grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the previous monarch appear still in the image taken by Kate Middleton during a family trip to Balmoral in the summer of 2022, and published in April of last year on what would have been the queen’s 97th birthday. Isabel II. “Yeah, they photoshopped it, so what?” American technology entrepreneur Christopher Bouzy said on Twitter/X. “It’s not easy to get the perfect photo with 10 children. It looks like they took several shots and then edited the photo to make it perfect. “I would have done the same,” he added then.
A photographic retouching known to everyone in the British royal family is the official posing of Prince Edward’s wedding. Photographer Geoffrey Shakerley photographed the Windsors on the wedding day of Elizabeth II’s youngest son with Sophie Rhys-Jones and years later the photographer told the anecdote that Prince William’s face had been modified. Apparently, Charles III’s son did not appear happy in the chosen shot and “digitally we were able to place another image of Prince William from one of the other shots where he was smiling.”
In another portrait in which Prince William appeared with a large crew during Royal Navy maneuvers in the seas off the island of Montserrat in July 2008, there were two versions of the same image that made the photographic retouching evident. In one of the images published by The Sun, it was not a member of the British royal family who was edited, but a member of the crew, who was made to disappear from the image. Surely the retouching was done to make the image more harmonious, but his knee and the lower part of his leg were left out.
There is one last famous case involving the British royal family and photo editing, although the Windsors had nothing to do with it. It was in 2010 when Malaysian politician Jeffrey Wong Su En posted a botched image of Queen Elizabeth II giving him a knighthood, he said at the time, “in recognition of his contribution to the aid organization Doctors Without Borders.” The politician missed the day and published the image before the investitures took place that year.
