Earlier today Kensington Palace released the first picture of Princess Kate since her abdominal surgery earlier this year. But today AP and two other wire services withdrew the photo because of evidence that "the source has manipulated the image":
ZOMG! What did the palace do?!? Put Kate's head on someone else's body? Broaden her smile in Photoshop?¹ Make up the picture from whole cloth using AI?
Meh. Probably not. Maybe they airbrushed a wrinkle from Kate's forehead. But that's still a no-no in the journalism world.
¹Yes, Photoshop has a feature just for this. It's under Neural Filters.
*yawn*
The real scandal is what you missed KD
She's not wearing her wedding ring !
That's true. but "they" say maybe she can't for medical reasons or maybe she lost weight after surgery and doesn't want it to fall off her finger. BUT even that is not the reason for withdrawing the photo. They are claiming that Charlotte's left hand and the edge of her sleeve look like they were manipulated. If you're interested, the Daily Mail has all the details and close-ups of the dreaded sleeve. Even then I can't see what the problem is. It's a delightful Mothering Sunday photo.
I don't see it either. Looks like a sleeve riding up slightly on the arms of a rapidly growing adolescent.
One suspects a "scandal" for its own sake. These are the British media we're talking about ...
The picture has a few oddities. The pattern in the boy's sweater and the cuff in the girl's sweater are off. I don't know whether a hand can do what the boy's hand is doing. If they had just airbrushed a wrinkle, nobody would have noticed.
I don't know whether a hand can do what the boy's hand is doing.
FWIW, it can, without outside manipulation. I just did it with no trouble.
Yeah, I’m 80 and I had no trouble doing that without assistance from the other hand. OTOH, if you want to try something a whole lot harder, try getting your hand in a similar shape, but with the ring finger over the middle finger.
I did too. and the boy is Prince Louis.
It's the secret gang sign of the Illuminati.
Well thank heaven Our Media are ON this kind of BLATANT FALSEHOOD being propounded by prominent people! MUCH more important than dwelling on silly little peccadillos like the 2 hours or so of near-constant falsehoods issuing from the orange-caked lips of the presumptive Republican nominee a few nights ago. I mean, SOME things are IMPORTANT!!
Did they use the collage feature which takes multiple photos and then blends in the best smile from each person?
I count at least 7 aberrations:
- Unusual jagged edge in what appears to be a step, in the lower left section
- Louis has an extra fat stub index finger
- Kate's right hand is in fast motion blur even while Louis' sweater is in perfect focus
- Charlotte's rear shoe's heel appears to have chunks missing
- Charlotte's left hand has ghosting image of a partially erased section of her sleeve
- Charlotte's hair appears as fat strips as they cross George's sleeve
- In the reflection of the glass, you can see three different blurry objects that were cloned next to each other
Nope
-- Wait, wut? A jagged edge in a piece of masonry at a royal estate? Note also the irregularities at the opposite end.
-- Louis index finger is simply bent
-- Oh dear something moved while something didn't
-- That's a piece of fringe: note the serrated end
-- Has a what of a what? See also growing adolescent.
-- Um .. it's hair?
-- Yes, window glass is always a perfect mirror.
So far I'm not convinced. And in any case, WHO CARES if they cleaned up an image ever so slightly? Does it tell a false story? Does it omit important detail? Is it any more significant than taking a dozen pictures and picking out the best one?
I mean ... wow.
-- Wait, wut? A jagged edge in a piece of masonry at a royal estate? Note also the irregularities at the opposite end.
Masonry doesn't get jagged edges like this. Most masons have trouble cutting bricks with a diamond blade without breaking.
-- Louis index finger is simply bent
Yeah, it's bent in two directions. Look at the fold-over on his index finger at the first joint. But it's also much fatter at the top joint as opposed to the bend point where the excess tissue spreads out. Try it out and see yourself.
-- Oh dear something moved while something didn't
I don't think you understand. Portrait photography is taken at a fairly high speed to avoid such blurring motions. To have that hand uniformly in blur is quite a spectacular feat.
-- That's a piece of fringe: note the serrated end
Could be, but when I blew it up and expanded the exposure and then the brightness, there was no distinguishable line from the edge of the fringe over the shoe.
-- Has a what of a what? See also growing adolescent.
The person who did the Photoshopping accidentally left a layer partially erased with less than 100% opacity. If you don't use Photoshop, this probably flies over your head.
-- Um .. it's hair?
In only this one section of her hair, this artefact exists. I think it's an attempted blur in an overlapping layer to avoid jagged lines around hair -- something all Photoshop folks have trouble with, as well as green screen folks.
-- Yes, window glass is always a perfect mirror.
No, but imperfect glass surfaces refract light in different directions. This section has the telltale signs of someone using the cloning tool in Photoshop. Not everything has this double-image, which tells us that it isn't the differential refraction from double-pane glass. Again, either you've used Photoshop and know all the issues of what can go wrong, or you don't. I've been using Photoshop for about 25 years. You?
The official reason was something with the girl's hand looked faked.
I've never used Photoshop but then I'm also not a whacko who is obsessed with masonry. You?
You betcha, I am.
Want to discuss the different types of masonry ties? The standard size of a common brick or CMU, or the standard joint size? How expansion joints in masonry can be obscured, or the distance between expansion joints? Differences between rough, tumbled, and smooth brick faces? The difference between mortar and grout? What a face brick is? What a cultured stone facade is? How brick panels are made? The importance of a a mortar trap, the distance between weep holes? The location and height of flashing at sills? Insect screens? Types of outboard insulation and their pros and cons?
Maybe you should have asked why I know so much about masonry.
I just read at Huffington Post that Catherine had made an edit to Princess Charlotte’s hand. This whole kerfuffle is ridiculous although the Palace could have prevented it by being honest in the first place. They have a long history of dealing with the media so they knew keeping things secret would make everything worse.
What I learned from life drawing classes and doing photography: people can and do pose in ways you wouldn't think, and it's easy to find oddities in photos that are 100% natural and real; just because you wouldn't expect it to look like that doesn't mean it won't. But look at y'all here, suddenly photoshop experts picking this apart, just because you're so smart. What is this, a Republican blog or something? =)
1776 people!
Who the f cares? We had a war (actually 2) over royalty.
After the Duke of Monmouth, the natural son of Charles II, was beheaded for rebellion in 1685, the palace realized they had no portrait of him. They sewed his head back on his neck and did the picture.
So there's form for this.
There are multiple portraits of Monmouth from before his execution that the palace owned so, er, no.
Well, people better than us, except for D_Ohrk_E1, have withdrawn the image from circulation for manipulation.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/10/first-post-op-photo-of-princess-of-wales-withdrawn-due-to-manipulation
Best Wishes, Traveller
So Kate is saying she edited the photo herself. https://apnews.com/article/princess-kate-manipulated-photo-482fda64281b4a63ccf30364d96b2622
The questions remain “why?” and “how?”
To my amateur eye, there are two wonky places in the doctored photo, each near Kate’s hands. Most of the news stories have focused on the strange repetition of Charlotte’s skirt pattern in the negative space above Charlotte’s sleeve. That area is just below Kate’s left hand.
And as D_Ohrk_E1 has pointed out, Kate’s right hand is strangely blurred on top of an unblurred area of Louis’s sweater.
My guess is that this photo had the best faces but Kate’s hands were not visible. They added back Kate’s hands from a different shot.
The edits seem to have been to Kate's hands, and I’m wondering if there were visible indications of continuing health care, ie incisions for medical tubes, etc.
The story was the #1 item on the local public radio news update about an hour ago. To which I say: wow!
Here’s a thread with many of the details:
https://x.com/lmxstn/status/1767154095238897954?s=46&t=ItVtC79AmXYdssEcGGydmg
You can spend 2 minutes or 15 minutes or all day down the rabbit hole. If only the JFK assassination had received this much scrutiny.
My two cents:
1. The royals’ obsession with their image is weird.
2. The obsession of royal watchers to poke holes in royals’ official story is weird.
3. The royals and their watchers deserve each other.
I was clearly interested enough (or bored enough today) to click on the Guardian article, which pointed out 20 different anomalies in the file.
If it was just minor fixes, the Palace should have already forwarded the original unedited.