No, Kate did not use her ‘Vogue’ cover in her family portrait – here’s how to tell
Every now and then, a photograph grips the nation. This time there’s two. The latest development in the “Katespiracy” saga is a claim the Princess of Wales’s 2016 Vogue shoot was reused in the now infamous Mother’s Day photo.
Analysis by i of the photo released by Kensington Palace on Sunday shows that it is extremely unlikely that Kate’s face was lifted from the magazine cover that was shot eight years ago.
International photo agencies pulled the image of Kate and her three children over concerns it had been manipulated. The Princess of Wales later apologised and indicated that “like many amateur photographers”, she had edited the image.
The events have fuelled wild online conspiracy theories about Kate as she recovers from the abdominal surgery she had in January.
One post on X, formerly known as Twitter, about the Vogue theory has been seen more than 35 million times. It is from a senior social media editor for a UK national newspaper, who faded the image of Kate from the Vogue shoot by photographer Josh Olins over the Mother’s Day photo, suggesting they are the same image.
However, when i placed the two images next to each other and rotated the Mother’s Day image to align Kate’s head with her pose from the Vogue cover, the lighting was found to be different.
The light in the Vogue image hits the left hand side of her face. The light in the Mother’s Day photo picks up Kate’s features on the right hand side of her face. Part of the problem is that by fading the image in and out, as many on social media have done, smaller details that are vital in image verification are much more challenging to see.
A more effective way to attempt to verify images is to use a slider.
The most obvious difference between the two images is Catherine’s eyes. The reflection of the light is in a different place in each eye. Her eyelashes and eyebrows are different, as is her make-up.
The details around Kate’s eyes in the Mother’s Day photo are different to those in the Vogue image, and the lines around her mouth are also different. And in the photo released on Sunday, more of her bottom teeth are visible compared with the cover.
Edits to the Mother’s Day photo point to an obvious and far less salacious reality than many on social media would prefer.
The image released on Sunday appears that it could be a number of photos from the same shoot layered and merged in Adobe Photoshop, the photo editing software used by many professionals. This is sometimes done by photographers who want to ensure every person in the photo looks their best, something not totally uncommon in photos with children, who can be harder to manage.
If the photographer ends up with a series of photos when the children are not all smiling in the same shot, for example, images can be spliced together to show all of them smiling in the same photo.
The Mother’s Day image issued at the weekend was pulled by photo agencies amid fears that it was manipulated, sparking speculation about the origins of the photo.
One of the agencies, Associated
Press, said the “source had manipulated the image” in a way that did not meet its standards.
The Princess of Wales, who has been out of the public eye following abdominal surgery, apologised for “confusion” over the photo.
In a statement issued almost 24 hours after the portrait was released, she appeared to take personal responsibility for altering the image.