In Great Britain, much has revolved around the new picture posted of Princess Kate Middleton and her children on the royal couple’s official Instagram.
The photo was published on Sunday and the authenticity of the image has since been questioned by several major news agencies – as it is deemed to have been manipulated. On Monday morning, several people chose to unpublish the image.
And shortly after, Kate admits that she edited the photo:
“Like many amateur photographers, I sometimes experiment with photo editing,” reads one posts on Instagram.
Swedish Briton: “It’s just fuel on the fire”
The Swedish-British James Savage, founder of the newspaper The Local, absolutely believes that the image is manipulated. And that the handling of it only blocks all conspiracy theories.
– About Kate disappearing, going abroad, that the marriage has crashed. That you then respond to it with a manipulated image is just adding fuel to the fire, he says in Efter fem.
Kate Middleton has not been seen in public since stomach surgery in January, sparking speculation about her health. The picture from last Sunday is the first since then of the princess. Other than the fact that the surgery was not cancer-related, no details about her health have been released.
– When we don’t have any answers, there is more air for conspiracy theories, says James Savage.
“Pretty clear signs of editing”
Even Jack Werner, journalist at Källkritikbyrån, thinks it is clear that the image has been edited.
– The most obvious is Princess Charlotte’s one arm which disappears into thin air against the background of her skirt, very odd. Even Kate’s zipper, down at the neck, disappears after a couple of centimeters, and becomes completely empty and fuzzy. In short, pretty clear signs of editing, he says.
According to Jack Werner, one theory is that the photo was taken with a mobile phone that has a program that uses AI to compile the best photos from a series of photos.
– So they have taken a number of pictures, but it is one that the phone itself produces. Then it may happen that it took some of the different pictures and stuffed them into one and the same one. And that’s what made it look so edited, he says.
Believed to have been edited in Photoshop
Later on Monday, however, several media reported that the photo appears to have been edited in Photoshop – not by AI.
– Newspapers have checked the meta behind the image and there you can see that it was taken with an expensive camera and then saved in Photoshop. It’s nothing strange, but it has been saved not just once, but twice in this app, which indicates that they did some pretty advanced things with the image, says James Savage and continues:
– It doesn’t have to be anything strange really. You can do it just to make them look a little smoother. But if you put that together with what we now know, that the image has been manipulated, it raises quite a few question marks.
James Savage believes that the British royal family could have handled this much better.
– If you assume that she is at home and trying to recover, why haven’t you been able to communicate that in a clearer way? Now they have the opportunity to kill the conspiracy theories, and then they do it in this way, which only blocks them. It is very strange, he says.