From Kate’s face being ‘transplanted’ from a magazine cover to bizarre rumors about the children’s clothes, conspiracy theories surrounding the now infamous Mother’s Day photo reached a new level of frenzy yesterday.
The fallout from the Palace’s handling of the crisis showed no signs of abating as online sleuths made increasingly ridiculous claims.
Among the most ridiculous are suggestions that the Princess of Wales was not present at last Friday’s photo shoot, but had been digitally ‘swapped’ from a Vogue photo taken eight years ago. Armchair detectives have also claimed the children’s clothing and other clues indicate the photo was actually taken last December and taped together for release on Mother’s Day.
Despite concerted efforts by the Palace to quash the smoldering rumors, the most eccentric theories have now been shared tens of millions of times online.
The rumors all stem from the now known fact that the portrait has been digitally edited. Detailed examination of the image reveals that pixels have noticeably changed in at least 26 areas, from Charlotte’s sleeve to Kate’s misaligned zipper. The problems have fueled the extraordinary theories. So is there some truth in the conspiracy theories?
To mark Mother’s Day, Kensington Palace posted a photo of the Princess of Wales with her three children on their official social media platforms on Sunday, March 10.
The ‘cloned’ VOGUE COVER
A video from a social media user claiming to show the Princess of Wales’ face was pushed off the June 2016 cover of Vogue and placed on her 2024 Mother’s Day portrait has been viewed 35 million times.
With her signature smile and tilted head, Kate’s face looks remarkably similar in the two images.
But the theory has been debunked by Eliot Higgins, the founder of forensic research website Bellingcat, who said: ‘There are so many little differences, like the reflection of light in her pupils, the light and shadow on her face, the visible teeth, wrinkles. . . that it is clearly just a photo of the same woman from approximately the same angle, and not the exact same photo. It hurts my brain to even have to say this.”
He added: ‘These people are looking for differences and losses.’
There could also be copyright implications if Kate had cut and pasted her Vogue portrait, taken by acclaimed royal portrait photographer Hugo Burnand.
There was a theory that the Princess of Wales’s face was pushed off the June 2016 cover of Vogue and placed on her 2024 Mother’s Day portrait
Matching red sweater from Princess Charlotte
With its striking ruffled neckline, the red cashmere sweater that eight-year-old Charlotte is wearing under her cardigan appears to be exactly the same garment she wore to an event in December when – with her brothers George, ten, and Louis, five, and the Princess of Wales – she was pictured visiting the Windsor Baby Bank, set up for mothers in need.
A US internet sleuth claimed that Charlotte was also wearing the same shoes – and suggested the photo was pieced together from footage taken on December 11.
Charlotte even appears to be wearing the same pink bracelet, which is said to have ‘faded’ in color since December.
Meanwhile, George’s plaid shirt and blue sweater also look very similar to the sweaters he wore during the baby bank visit, even though the collar should have been a shade of blue to be the same shirt.
Yet neither George nor Charlotte were seen at the baby couch in the same position as in the portrait.
And even royal children sometimes wear the same clothes. Lee Walton, imaging technician at DMG Newspapers, said of the Mother’s Day photo: “Whatever the online conspiracy theorists would have you believe, I can categorically say that no one’s head or hands have been completely replaced.”
Debunking claims about Louis’ teeth
Another way to debunk the theory of last December’s photo is Louis’s missing tooth. In the portrait, the little boy has lost one of his lower baby teeth.
But the tooth was present in photographs of him on Christmas Day at Sandringham, suggesting the Mother’s Day portrait was taken after Christmas and not before Christmas.
Princess Charlotte imagined herself visiting the Windsor Baby Bank, set up for mothers in need, in December last year
Prince Louis pictured with Mia Tindall on Christmas Day at Sandringham
Why are the leaves on the trees so green?
Others insist the photo is from earlier in 2023, because of the green leaves of a plant behind it.
But Guy Barter, chief adviser at the Royal Horticultural Society, said it was not possible to identify the plant and pointed out that Britain has had a mild winter, with many plants in leaf ahead of times in the US, where many online critics live.
People in Britain also shared photos of their gardens with green leaves on shrubs and plants.
What Do the Telltale Signs of Photoshop Say?
The palace steadfastly refuses to release ‘the original’ photo before Kate’s adjustments. What does this tell us?
It would be a long shot to suggest that Prince William took more than one “original photo” during last week’s 40-minute session in Windsor. And some may show the young Royal Highnesses engaging in less than optimal poses.
Perhaps a child blinked when the shutter clicked, or yawned – or even did ‘bunny ears’ in a moment of playfulness. Just think how tightly the grinning five-year-old Prince Louis’ fingers are crossed.
Whatever these ‘original’ images show – and the Palace will never release them – it is clear that none of the frames were considered ‘perfect’ in themselves.
By the time the Prince of Wales, acting as official photographer, returned his wife’s £2,900 Canon 5D Mark IV camera, there will likely have been several almost identical photographs, showing different members of the family looking in different frames look their best.
Catherine, then Duchess of Cambridge, takes photos as Prince William takes part in helicopter maneuvers over Dalvay Lake in 2011
The most likely explanation, therefore, is entirely innocent: that Kate, 42, after watching her husband’s photographic efforts on the screen of her Apple Mac, innocently performed a simple editing trick to merge the best of each frame into one composite ‘ perfect’ family portrait.
As she herself said in the mea culpa that appeared after the furor broke out worldwide: ‘Like many amateur photographers, I occasionally experiment with montage.’
Details hidden in the file’s ‘metadata’ properties show it was edited using Adobe Photoshop, at 9.54pm on Friday and 9.39am on Saturday, Sky News reported.
Photoshop has a feature called ‘Photo Merge’ that is designed exactly for this purpose. It allows you to create a composite image by selecting the best parts of two or more nearly identical photos.
For example, the software can ‘intelligently’ replace the face of a blinking child with the same child smiling beautifully in a photo taken moments later. But it is not seamless and leaves its mark, as the royal family has discovered to their cost.
