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Kate image withdrawn by three news agencies amid 'manipulation' concerns
- ksherlock 3y agoHere's another article that shows where the image gets suspicious: https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1875909/princess-kate-mothers-day-photo-editing https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1875909/princess-kate-m...
- aaronrobinson 3y agoThere’s stuff doing the rounds on twitter from a investigative journalist that’s pretty dark. This image stuff is adding fuel to that fire.
- brcmthrowaway 3y agoI'm hungover on a Sunday, got a link?
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agohttps://twitter.com/ellievhall https://twitter.com/ellievhall
- aaronrobinson 3y agoThe stuff I read also claimed that the children and her parents haven’t been seen either.
- PKop 3y agoDon't leave us hanging. Which journalist?
- subpixel 3y agoEllie Hall
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoJust search for Kate Middleton. The (soapy) speculation is that Kate is either ill, dead, or missing for some other reason. It is quite strange to post - and then have to kill - a montage with obvious flaws when a real photo should have been so much easier.
- MBCook 3y agoWow that is really soapy. That’s like Kim Jong Un level speculation.
- defrost 3y agoLengthy March 7 piece with much background on difficulty of dealing with UK Royal Press Officers, and a timeline of Kate related events. https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/03/this-is-just-weird-buzzfeed-news-former-royals-reporter-on-kate-middleton-palace-press-and-distrust-in-the-media/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/03/this-is-just-weird-buzzfee... by Ellie Hall. “I cannot emphasize enough how out of character it is that a royal press team went on the record in response to what is essentially gossip.”
- retox 3y agoThe intersection of Kate's head and her son's chin looks suspect to me, and there is no wedding ring to be seen. All very strange.
- afavour 3y agoI’m not much of a royal watcher but I do find this story fascinating. I suspect the reality is going to end up being boring: people at the palace (or William himself given he apparently took the photo) are a combination of arrogant and insecure enough that they took a perfectly good but not quite perfect photo and felt like they had to edit it until it looked exactly like they decided it should. But we’ll see.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoProbably, but doing that for a high profile person that is the subject of wild speculation because of a recent absence isn't smart.
- afavour 3y agoArrogance overpowering sensible decision making feels like a royal trait, at least.
- rjeli 3y agoThere was a story a few weeks ago about some odd picture taken, and it turned out to be motion blur compensation / HDR / some other computational method creating artifacts. That’s my first instinct looking at this pic, but who knows!
- baerrie 3y agoIt is very normal for professional photographers to pose subjects separately or use head shots on the body of a different photo. In this case, the lighting on all of their faces is too consistent and similar, and indicates their faces were photographed separately and then composited. You would be surprised by the number of movie star promo photos you see where they have put the actor’s head on a different subjects body
- greenyoda 3y agoBut that's not normal for journalistic photos, which are assumed to be a record of an event that actually occurred.
- baerrie 3y agoFor sure. I would imagine a portrait photographer may not understand the distinction though
- MBCook 3y agoWhether that matters or not when the photo was given to the AP its origin was misrepresented. And whoever did that likely knew what they were doing or at least confirmed things as true they didn’t actually know to be true.
- afavour 3y agoIs this a journalistic photo, though? It’s reportedly taken by William himself. It’s a PR photo, at best.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoThis seems to a bit more informative as to the issues: https://twitter.com/chrisshipitv/status/1766947758529822803/photo/1 https://twitter.com/chrisshipitv/status/1766947758529822803/...
- afavour 3y agoAnd for those, like me, that are way out of the loop in the whole situation I found this to be an interesting if long read: https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/03/this-is-just-weird-buzzfeed-news-former-royals-reporter-on-kate-middleton-palace-press-and-distrust-in-the-media/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/03/this-is-just-weird-buzzfee...
- tangue 3y agoAm I the only one to think of the text editor when I see Kate without much context in a title ?
- inatreecrown2 3y agono you're not ;-)
- brcmthrowaway 3y agoThr good old days, who wouldve thought we use Microsoft editors on Linux now
- dmix 3y agoIt seems someone removed objects from the kids hands? Maybe a branded thing or something personal. Maybe an animal.
- retox 3y agoThis thread has been flag bombed and it currently on the last page of HN, item #636
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- amanzi 3y agoPutting aside the terrible Photoshop job, I found it interesting that the two youngest kids have both crossed their middle fingers as some sort of gesture. Surprised that I didn't see any mention of that in the articles.
- WheelsAtLarge 3y agoI get the feeling that the editing was done by an IA editing tool of some kind. Here's what Google has to say about the one in their pixel 8. "If you’re trying to take a group photo, even if you take multiple shots, chances are someone is always looking away or blinking — we’ve all been there, especially if you’ve ever tried to take a photo with kids. To take the stress out of getting that perfect group shot, the new Best Take feature in Google Photos uses a series of similar photos taken close together to help you automatically create a blended image with everyone’s best expression."
- tim333 3y agoYeah people say photoshop but it looks to me like some sort of phone processing. NYT article about that on the pixel 8 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/11/technology/personaltech/google-pixel8-photos.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/11/technology/personaltech/g... Probably William took several photos and then some button popped up saying something like 'enhance' which did that.
- cpleppert 3y agoThis isn't a simple composition; entire details were ai created. You can see sections around her hair that look like stable diffusion inpainting. The texture will immediately be cut off and a very softer blurred ai generated part will continue. There are details all around the image that look like that. The jacket and both sweaters aren't original for instance. Large sections of the background on the left were clearly added in as well. Virtually the only original parts of the image that are unmodified are the faces and hair from the neck up and fingers on the two older children. The person who made this clearly had nothing to go on.
- matthewfelgate 3y agoIf she's taking longer to recover from surgery than expected, why don't they just be honest and say that?
- defrost 3y agoPrincess of Wales: Kate apologises for Mother's Day photo 'confusion' https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68534359 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68534359 The Princess of Wales has apologised "for any confusion" her Mother's Day photograph caused, after five agencies retracted it over editing concerns. Catherine, in a statement posted on Kensington Palace social media, said: "Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing." The image, taken by the Prince of Wales, was the first of Catherine to be released since her surgery in January.