UKH

Apparently Prince George's sweater has been altered to make it look greener. I think that says it all.

Another typically feeble attempt by the Royals to make themselves look more environmentally friendly.

This a really is an incredibly boring story. I'm pretty sure my phone automatically edits every photo I take.

Not convinced there's a story here.

To my mind, the only (very small) story is about how vigilant the picture agencies were. One whiff of an edited pixel, and they yanked the photo off the wire.

Many wire photographers have lost their jobs when editing was discovered in their submissions. Wire photos are moved as unedited, as clients must be convinced that images are real. (Framing, timing, POV, bias is another debate.)

An amateur editing her photos..? Hardly newsworthy.

Indeed there are two angles to this story. The Royal angle which everyone seems to be focussing on because it’s Kate but isn’t actually the story we should be worried about.. and the angle of trustability in the press. For if we do not call out edited photos being distributed as fact from our own Royal family then how can we even begin to accept any photo we see in the press as real? This becomes incredibly important when photography can often be the swinging factor in public perception. There are countless examples over the decades. The naked Vietnamese girl running down the street terrified, the more recent photo of that young boys dead body after he drowned at sea on a migrant/refugee boat crossing. Imagine not being able to trust the photos coming out of Ukraine or Gaza even more recently. 

If they would or could produce the original then I think the story would be over with the lesson learnt. The intriguing thing is the lack of explanation of why they havn't.

It's all odd, she's probably has a precautionary hysterectomy or similar, why not just go public with everything and why edit any picture. If you can't get kids all smiling together, that's family life, all parents have been there. 

The ww2 usa troops raising the flag on that Island was a staged repeat, after they'd already taken the ground, done the flag earlier etc..  we all do it to one extent or another. 

It's also important to distinguish reportage from PR.

This is a PR shot. Not evidence of a war crime.

Considering they're all shape-shifting lizard creatures I think Kate's done a pretty good Photoshop job

And we don't seem to mind Kate editing her face by applying make-up so what's the difference?

I don't trust anybody who wears makeup anymore. They're all liars.

Quite right.. it was a staged repeat, but the staged repeat happened, so it’s a true to life portrayal of the repeat even if not the original event itself. This is different to digitally manipulating an image. As captain p points out, it technically then actually becomes a PR shot rather than an editorial which is ultimately what it was. But even PR shots should not be digital manipulated in this fashion. You might get away with playing with the colours and brightness and what not a bit more than an editorial shot but if it’s being used in the press then it should still be free from digital manipulation. 

Quite a few people want to know what was Kate's medical procedure and the lack of information combined with the Palace being open about the King's cancer diagnosis leads to speculation - has she had X,Y,Z why aren't we being told, etc.

Apart from one photo of her in a car she hasn't been seen in public since she was in hospital and I think this most recent photo, which was allegedly taken very recently,  was meant to show things are OK.

However, despite Kate saying she sometimes does some editing, the odd things in the photo  - Charlotte's left sleeve, Kate's zip - suggest there is more than just a bit of simple editing(colour balance, contrast, levelling etc), which leads to the question, "Why?"Is it, as said, a photo taken recently or one constructed from others taken some time ago?

Dave

and men with beards or moustaches.  and those who shave.  they're all doing it

None of this would have happened if William had stuck to tradition and married one of his cousins.

There's some absolute nonsense and far too many conspiracy theories in this story.

1) She's taught herself photography as a bit of an antidote to the tedious formal photos and presumably because she's a normal human and likes to take pics of her family as they grow

2) Standard practice for family photographers is the head-swap. Take a bunch of photos of ostensibly the same thing, then select the ones that show the subjects in the most flattering light and photoshop the smiley ones together

3) A couple of pixels here or there is irrelevant for most amateurs and the priority is reasonable effort, not perfection

4) When combined with frothing hysteria about a personal and private medical procedure that's nobody else's business, and 'royal correspondents' who have to justify their inflated salaries and egos, it leads to conspiracies and nonsense.

6 downvotes.

I thought that was pretty funny lighthearted and clever, thanks for a smile from me

Cheers

Toby

I dont know how familiar the press are with modern technology. It doesn't have to be sinister. But if it fills a few hundred pages, pays the mortgage for the writers and sells advertising space for the media, then all's good.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/04/google-announces-ai-powered-photo-editing...

As for her medical thing. FFS!. Do we have some sort of obligation to know everything. Its like that person at work who gossips about why 'X was off for 3 weeks sick, last year and then off again for 2 weeks this year'.

Men with beard are being true to themselves. It's those clean shaven lot you need to watch out for. 

My attempt at a joke has three downvotes for far? No more jokes on this thread. It's serious.

Really? Good grief.

Apparently this was the original.

Google currently running adverts for their Pixel phone to do exactly this.

The degree of fuss about this story seems utter madness, as does the calls that the press should never use digitally manipulated PR shots. Airbrushing, 'sketching', composites, and now Photoshop, etc. have been used for decades for PR/publicity.

You're not living up to your name here.

Thanks. If they're a judgement on the feebleness of my pun, I'm crushed. Irritating royalists I can live with.

Maybe they should get a life, and stop obsessing about the royals/celebrities...?

How about this...

What other story is this one distracting us from...?

Is this a dead cat/squirrel?

The truth is out there...

To be blunt, someone's health is their business, not anybody else's. What do the public want, photos of a stoma bag?

I think we've all seen enough of Mick Fowler's, thanks all the same.

While I fundamentally don't approve of the concept of a royal family, she's ultimately just a woman with a young family going through something probably quite difficult. It's none of our f***** business unless and until she wants it to be.

jk

You're conflating commercial and PR here.

Let's take LEGO as an example. LEGO, for their catalogue, their own product website etc can do all the airbrushing, sketching, comping, photoshopping they want. That's commercial photography. They can do all that editing because they are bound by the rules governing advertising. These pictures may of course end up in a newspaper or a website but it would be clear that they were advertising. If they edit a product too much and it causes a rush of disgruntled customers then they'll be forced to pay for refunds and maybe looked at by the ASA or whatever they're called these days. So it sort of self regulates on the whole.

If LEGO chose to do a PR stunt, or new shop opening or whatever else out there in the real world (and I know this, because I've photographed a few of them...) then the photographs that come out of the event need to meet editorial standards to be used in the press. You can't go photoshopping a few extra bricks in willy nilly.

So to surmise, Kate could have photoshopped her picture so she had a wooden leg, patch on her eye and a parrot on her shoulder and put it on her own twitter or instagram feed and no one would have batted an eyelid. But it could not go out to press via news agencies as it wouldn't be editorially accurate representation of real life.

Well, maybe she does have a wooden leg, maybe that's what they're hiding...  

Its the phenomenon behind this I find fascinating, the overt media bias over the years favouring Kate and demonising Megan Markle. The same Rabid Brexit Granny's across the Nation are saying "Leave her alone" and in the same breath wishing Turbo Cystitis on Megan.

Personally I think William has been caught playing hide the Royal Bratwurst with the Nanny and the couple are on the verge of Divorce. Its the total media blackout that speaks more than an edited happy families photo, its a lesson that you cant play the media game when you want to and expect it not to backfire when you don't.

That's odd. My thorough internet search has thrown this up as the original shot

https://www.cbr.com/marvel-spider-man-lizard-facts/#he-turned-his-cloned-fa...

The mystery deepens

Yes, why not? If you're paying a photographer to get a representation of your family on the wall, who cares if the smiles on the kids' faces were half a second apart? It's the same kids, they're genuine smiles, it's just a composite - the same as many of the 5* photos on this site.

Is this really what frothing douchebags are getting all worked up about. 

We are truly a weird, fecked up country

Talking and being open about ailments rarely does harm. The stiff upper lip mentality and not seeking physical or mental support for their health often makes things much worse in all respects. Even just explaining the basics about why you shouldn't be in a car after stomach surgery would kill some rumours and add to people's greater understanding of medical treatment in general. 

I suppose it doesn't matter. I was just surprised. I'd imagined a professional photographer would take some pride in "capturing the moment". 

I'd actually very much doubt that.

We do.. we caught the moment that each member of the family laughed but they didn't all laugh at the same time so we combined all those smiles in to the same picture. It's possible to 'capture the moments' and create a nice photograph/product (call it what you will) that someone will enjoy forevermore - and in 99.99999% of cases it's completely and utterly irrelevant to anyone else because most family photos don't end up on news wires

*in such a case I'd provide the original pictures alongside the montage as the true moments that happened are just as important!

Disagree. A professional photographer aims to meet their brief. Representing a family is about representing a family, not an arbitrary moment in time.

Here's one, from the front page of the gallery: https://www.ukhillwalking.com/photos/?category=5#&gid=1&pid=3 Edit: can't link it - the Matt George one.

I suspect after a stomach op sitting upright in jeans for multiple shots trying to get all the kids perfect would be time consuming, uncomfortable and in the big scheme of things who cares. I think in the future she will be less willing to deal with the press and share family images. The amount of bull that's printed daily, it's a little rich moaning about some editing. 

The thing I can’t understand is why make those specific edits? The sleeve of a jumper, a zip, and a fuzzy looking hand. Weird. There’s no evidence it was peoples faces being edited (unless the software is o good that no one can tell). 

Nobody made those edits specifically, they're artefacts of bad use of some of the automated tools within whatever editing package they used. 'Content aware fill', that sort of thing. Whoever edited it clearly didn't understand the issues with using these sorts of tools and failed to check for errors and correct them thereafter. 

Same principles applies to the built in manipulation software of mobile phone cameras, if this was all done 'in device' or 'in camera', as it were.

Like you hire a decorator and he does a cracking job of painting your walls but didn't spread his dust sheets properly and left a few splodges of paint on your carpet and sofa.

It could have been something as simple as selecting the clone tool by accident.

Fine, but this should be excluded from the definition of "Photograph".  It is a Photo-Montage.

Notice how the media have homed in obsessively on this story as a distraction from having to say very much about anything much more serious going on right now elsewhere in the world.

Agree with you. Tbh, I've done it loads of times, at weddings in particular. You have to shoot so quickly and get through so many various iterations of different uncles and aunties or whatever that inevitably there will be instances when one of say three similar shots will clearly have the best composition but that somebody is blinking in it, for example. Its quick and easy to convincingly swap the face in from a different frame and everyone is happy. Similarly I often get asked to do exactly that if the wind is blowing hair over a face, etc. 

Getting it right in camera is best but is frankly impossible all the time when a couple are expecting 500 odd quality finished images.

I was a press photographer for a decade too and without express direction from my editor I'd never have changed anything. They're quite different circumstances as you imply. 

The faux outrage about a nonstory is far more sinister than any of the photo fakery.

It was probably Prince Andrew loitering in the background so they used the Google Magic Erasure. The sleeve and hand etc are just a hangover of the in-built tool. Not worth reading anything into it.

Ta, thought it might have been but know little about this sort of stuff. 

Ta, thought it might have been but know little about this sort of stuff. 

The famous shot of the Soviet flag hoisted over Berlin in 1945 was made from a tablecloth!

That one of The Last Supper is a bit suspect as well. 

Sorry Gordon but I think this is a rather cynical take.

I went bouldering on Sunday, and in between tries I was on my phone & my twitter feed was overwhelmingly full of speculation about the inaccuracies in this picture, made a of comments about it myself which garnered a few hundred likes.

If I had posted some comments about some more important issues - Gaza, Ukraine etc - I've no doubt they would have gathered a tiny amount of views and no likes interactions at all.

What does this tell us?  The royal photo was very much the zeitgeist topic on Sunday evening, online speculation was rife, people were engaged and interested. 

It's normal and right that the press would pick up on the story, in fact failure to do so would only fan the flames of speculation, allowing it to take the place of real information.

Sure it might not be important to you, and other world events are far, far more important but I'm not buying for a second that this is some kind of deliberate tactic by the press to distract from other issues.  A frankly ridiculous suggestion.

It was the jellies.

or as rumour has it Rose Hanbury plays hide the Bratwurst in William

News agencies like AP publish slightly edited images all the time. I think news agencies took the unusual step of pulling this image because they believe it has not only been slightly edited, but actually deliberately manipulated to mislead. Apparently the noise patterns suggest that the centre of the image has been heavily edited, and the camera flash on Kate's eyes is different from everyone else's in the image, suggesting that Kate's face comes from another image which may not have even been taken this year. It has additionally been suggested that the image released of William and Kate in the car yesterday was actually taken last Christmas and subsequently manipulated. 

I don't have the technical knowledge to evaluate either of the above allegations. But if they are true, then it looks like Kensington Palace are strenuously trying to mislead the public about something. What that is must be very personal to William and Kate, and they surely have a right to keep it private. But then again if the Mother's Day image was deliberately put together as a composite image by KP, then they presumably intended us to notice that Kate's wedding ring was left off. 

Overall what the royals are up to doesn't really interest me, especially compared to what else is going on in the world. For me the interest here is in the increasingly important theme of disinformation through digital images and our inability to tell whether we're being sold a narrative.

Other way round surely?

Oh hang on.

As you were.

Speculation and gossip, then?

On a day when it was announced that in February, the average global sea surface temperature was the highest ever recorded, its comforting to see that the people of the the UK and USA are staying focused on the important stuff.

That's a very good point; given how much misinformation about real world issues some of them spew out, it's a bit rich to throw a hissy fit over a few misplaced pixels in a nice family picture that is of no significance to the world.

Maybe the odd one, but, as I said, I very much doubt "many of the 5* photos on this site".

At least that one was owned up to just in case there was any doubt.

"Unchaperoned with the Marchioness of Cholmondeley and a Smoked Bavarian Sausage, with my reputation ... what were they thinking ?"

Who'd of thought the Fast Show had it right all those years ago ?

I don't think I've seen any outrage, faux or not, anywhere, except perhaps bemoaning the prominence of the story. Just curiosity and speculation.