The Metadata on Kate Middleton's Family Photo Confirms What We ...

Rumors about Princess Kate’s absence from the public eye aren’t slowing down, especially in light of major news agencies retracting a controversial Kensington Palace family portrait because the photo had been excessively manipulated. But, as we navigate through a sea of frenzied intrigue and far-fetched conspiracies, one thing we can plausibly rely on is the metadata in the image file.

Metadata—or information about an image, which can be automatically or manually added to image file formats like JPGs—can indicate when and where a photo was taken, on what kind of camera, and how many times the file has been edited. This is particularly illuminating in the case of the recently released Wales family portrait, which offered the first official look at Kate since the palace announced she’d been hospitalized for abdominal surgery in mid-January.

Analyses from the BBC and Sky News help paint a picture of the lead-up to the photo controversy, confirming the image had undergone multiple edits before being disseminated by the palace. On Monday, Kate admitted making the edits in a published apology attributed to her.

BBC Verify found that the portrait was taken with a Canon camera, and that it was subsequently saved twice in Adobe Photoshop on an Apple Mac computer. The first version was saved on March 8 at 21:54 GMT (or 5:54 p.m. ET), and the second version was saved the following day at 9:39 GMT (or 5:39 a.m. ET).

In addition to corroborating these findings, the Sky News data and forensics team’s analysis also found that the photo was shot at Adelaide Cottage—where the Wales family resides in Windsor, west of London—with a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV camera with a Canon 50mm lens.

While both analyses confirmed the photo had been edited in Photoshop, neither yielded a date when the photo was actually taken.

The palace released the portrait on March 10 and announced that Prince William had captured the shot last week. It shows Kate sitting amongst her three children, Prince George, 10, Princess Charlotte, 8, and Prince Louis, 5. Hours later, agencies including the Associated Press, Reuters, and Getty Images killed distribution of the photo, claiming the source had manipulated the original image. The palace has no plans to release the original unaltered picture.

Karwai Tang//Getty Images

On Monday, a statement attributed to Kate and published to the Waleses’ social media channels admitted to digital alteration of the picture: “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused.”

A palace source subsequently told Bazaar, “This was an amateur, family photograph taken by the Prince of Wales. [William and Kate] wanted to offer an informal picture of the family together for [Britain’s] Mother’s Day.”

The insider added that Kate had “made minor adjustments” to the picture, and that the family as a whole had spent the holiday “together and had a wonderful day.”