Princess of Wales Edited Photos

> BBC Verify has spoken to Prof Hany Farid, an expert in image analysis, who said the editing could be a "bad job of photoshopping".

> He identified a missing portion of the cuff on Princess Charlotte's jumper and a blur on Catherine's right hand and in hair on the right of her face.

> He said it was consistent with a couple of different explanations - poor photoshopping, artefacts of post-processing done by the camera to remove features like blurs, or a bad composite of images.

> "There is a relatively new feature where you have a group of people, the camera identifies them through face detection, and it takes a series of photos in rapid succession," he explains.

Or, a cynical take, you can create it from scratch...

> What editing is allowed by agencies?

> "You photograph it, you can crop it, you can put a bit of sharpener on it if you have to... and then you send it," Mr Edwards said.

> "You don't alter the actual picture itself. For instance, if one of the people in the picture has red eye, you can't take the red eye out, you have to leave it as it is."

Hmm.. I'm pretty sure that's not all media agencies do.

> What does metadata of the image show?

> The first version was saved on 8 March at 21:54 GMT, and the second was saved on 9 March at 09:39.

> Metadata in the Reuters version of the picture does not include any information about Photoshop saves, and says the version was created at 11:34 on 10 March.

2 days - that's quite a lot of time...

> What did the Princess of Wales say?

> She said in a written statement: "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.

I very much doubt she spends her free time editing photos.

In the light of the ease with which photos are possible to fake, I tend to frame this story as part of drive to have agencies for licensed/approved photos.

Eg "Snopes certifies this is a real photo" tm