Lovely new photo of Catherine and the children has been released

[BirthdayRainbow]

I know there will still be people saying it proves nothing, it was taken pre op but why not just enjoy the photo..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68526972

I’m with you, I’m not really seeing the trigger. Well I didn’t until respected sources called the photo into question. Even then I’m not really waiting with bated breath for the royal PR’s next move…

There will be masses of stuff that is kept out of the public domain. I don’t really care what, or the reasons behind it provided it’s within legal boundaries. Everything else is just gossip surely?

This comment aged well 🤣

What’s the point of this post?

Clearly global media standards and rules of engagement have changed since 1902 and KP PR should know these and work within them.

There will be masses of stuff that is kept out of the public domain. I don’t really care what, or the reasons behind it provided it’s within legal boundaries
I care ,huge amounts of money involved and i don't like hypocrisy.

I don’t think PR rules of engagement have changed though, have they? (News is different).

Was this a Reddit hoax?

Also, no one is mad about 'retouching'. The photo was pulled for being entirely faked not because Kate had a spot she had photoshopped

So another day another circus 🙄

It seems to be beyond an awful lot of them to be able to take a step without tripping over these days.

Got a source for that? Because the picture agency itself said the Charlotte’s cuff was the reason it was pulled. Which seems likely given it’s looked manipulated from the outset.

It’s the rabid gossips, not the picture agencies who are claiming the whole photo is fake. I think that’s unlikely. (And if you go back and look at my posts right from the start of the thread I have said it looked like they’d tweaked the image to get everyone looking at the camera and smiling naturally in the same shot).

Is that you Kate?

Well what a saga.

When I first saw the photo, three things felt odd:

a) Kate's face not looking anything like the pap shot from last week suggesting one or the other was fake,
b) the synchronous ecstatic smiling by the kids, and
c) the tight skinny jeans worn by Kate, not what you'd expect from someone recovering from major abdominal surgery and still so frail that she can't be seen in public until June.

But what do I know, eh?

Easter is this month, not June. Surely we can all wait a few weeks.

So did KP release the picture to the media?
Or did the media just take it from IG? (Presumably not, b copyright etc?)

I can definitely see the line on her head, maybe one of those ‘best pics’ type things, and it’s several photos mashed together.

Which is fine for their personal IG, but clearly if they have released it for media use, it doesn’t meet the standards?

Pretty sloppy from them tbh, as people are behaving maniacally already, so you’d think they would have been all over it.

Some smartphones can do the ‘best choice/photo merging’ for you automatically these days - you take say six photos then choose the ‘best’ version of each face then ‘merge’ into a combined photo

@Legacy Thank you for this. I didn't know about this feature, but it would explain why a lot of the alleged photoshopping is so weird.

In particular, Louis's fingers look exactly like what you would expect AI (which is presumably what powers the photo merging feature) to mess up. AI is notoriously bad with fingers. On the other hand, a person would have to be on crack to alter his fingers like that with photo editing software (and what would they have been trying to remove - a gun? a syringe?).

This can probably also explain the wobbly sweater pattern at the top of Louis's rlght arm, and the cuff of Charlotte's top that seems to have a hole in it (there is a bit of red just visible to our left of her wrist).

And the BBC are pretty clear that the problem for the agencies is that they distributed it onto news sites. If it was simply on Instagram it wouldn't be a problem. The agencies have really strict standards about manipulation of photos in the news. KP released it as a thank you and a nice mother's day image, should someone in the media team have anticipated the issue, probably, but they didn't.

The fact that people are using it to stir more of what Newscast yesterday called nonsense says more about them than Catherine.

The face descrepancy is I think down to the fact that one is an extremely zoomed long lens of a private moment and one is a posed deliberate shot in fairly close quarters. If you have seen people do make up tutorials on shading they show how different a face can look.

Maybe the kids were happy?

I suspect that the dark top was chosen so it was hard to zoom in on her stomach area, not surprising given the online comfortable. I bet her jeans were undone too.

That's the existing policy - though of course a certain level of touching up may still slip through through unnoticed and of course deep fake is a much bigger issue.

But the main agencies have set themselves against all photo manipulation, as a principled stand, because they do not want their photos to lie, even when it could just be little tidy ups that do not change the context or message of the photo.

It's not a matter of getting the most publicity, it's a matter of getting the right publicity. This has been a giant PR mess and the palace bods will not be congratulating themselves this morning.

Are the men in grey suits no longer about? Couldn't see this happening under Lizzie's watch.

The Queen would be appalled

Out of interest, do you have a source for the withdrawal only being about Charlotte's sleeve?

Surely if the photo was lifted from a sm account then no one asked the press to print it?
There decision to pull the photo doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

Isn't all publicity ultimately good publicity?

They won't be using a smart phone though. Kate has proper equipment, they'll have used that.

There was also a lot of snark about Harry's allegedly photoshopped hair on his BetterUp profile months ago but oddly no news agencies pulled their photos of his hair.

WCBS News specifically mentioned a child's arm last night. The AP website also specifically states Charlotte's arm.

Yes, the posts about "one picture and a(further) message of thanks will end all this speculation" really didn't age well.

There have been discussions in the past about the possible photoshopping of a number of released pictures from various Royals. It's quite likely that they do use a kind of "best shot" for groups (and would be far from alone in that)

Does any manipulation change what the pic is showing - a smiling mother with laughing children to mark Mothers Day (as this family does every year). Well, to some it will - especially those who have been banging the "where's Kate" drum.

To others, it'll make no difference to respecting the "privacy until about Easter" request, on the grounds that they must be OK (as no parents would put their DC through a pretence of that scale)

Ah, Louis fingers are the most authentic part of this pic I think - I recognise that energy - the vibe of a kid who has to stand still long enough to get the pic but would rather be active...he's itching to hold a tennis ball. Or a lego minifigure.

Surely this is cock-up rather than conspiracy. The picture was released to KP's SM and the press, in their haste to be the first to publish on their outlets, lifted it and ran with it. But who hasn't filtered or altered an insta pic? Especially if there are so many people involved.