Kensington Palace has released an official statement in response to concerns over an image of Princess Kate and her three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, that was shared to mark Mother's Day on Sunday.
The statement comes after questions were raised over whether the image had been digitally altered. The photo, taken by Prince William, is the first of the princess to be released after her abdominal surgery.
In a message shared on social media on Monday morning, Princess Kate stated: "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 hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother's Day. C."
Royal sources said the Princess of Wales made "minor adjustments" and that Kate and Prince William wanted to offer an informal picture of the family together for Mother's Day.
"The Wales family spent Mother's Day together and had a wonderful day," the source added.
Earlier on, the PA news agency said it would be withdrawing the image from its picture service.
A spokesperson for the national news agency has since said: "Like other news agencies, PA Media issued the handout image provided by Kensington Palace of the Princess of Wales and her children in good faith yesterday.
"We became aware of concerns about the image and we carried a report about it last night, and made clear that we were seeking urgent clarification about the image from Kensington Palace. In the absence of that clarification, we are killing the image from our picture service."
The official website of Associated Press states "minor adjustments to photos are acceptable". The website reads: "These include cropping, dodging and burning, conversion into grayscale, elimination of dust on camera sensors and scratches on scanned negatives or scanned prints and normal toning and color adjustments.
"These should be limited to those minimally necessary for clear and accurate reproduction and that restore the authentic nature of the photograph. Changes in density, contrast, color and saturation levels that substantially alter the original scene are not acceptable.
"Backgrounds should not be digitally blurred or eliminated by burning down or by aggressive toning. The removal of “red eye” from photographs is not permissible.
The photograph in question showed Kate sitting on a chair, surrounded by her three children. The princess had her arms around Princess Charlotte, eight, and Prince Louis, five, who are on either side of her, while Prince George, ten, is standing behind with his arms hugging her neck.
The mum-of-three captioned the post: "Thank you for your kind wishes and continued support over the last two months. Wishing everyone a Happy Mother's Day. C."
Royal fans had questioned whether the image had been photoshopped after claiming that the sleeve of Princess Charlotte's cardigan did not line up.
Later that day, the photo was withdrawn by international picture agencies over concerns that the image had been manipulated.
The photo marked the first image released of Kate since her planned operation at the London Clinic on January 16. She was released two weeks later and returned to Adelaide Cottage in Windsor. The mum-of-three is not expected to return to royal duties until after Easter.
Sharing an update on Kate's health in the latest issue of HELLO! magazine, royal author Robert Jobson, whose new biography Catherine, The Princess of Wales is published this summer, told us: "From what I hear, Kate has got into a routine again and is functioning well, but she doesn't want to rush things.
"I have spoken to people close to her and I think she is recovering well but is not quite a hundred per cent."
LISTEN: All about this year's royal health scares...
Kate's uncle Gary Goldsmith defended the Waleses and claimed they would not have been responsible for altering the image. The Celebrity Big Brother evictee said on Good Morning Britain: "Obviously the family wouldn’t be the ones to do any touch-ups, so if that's gone through some filter before it's gone out to the broader world, but they wouldn't be doing photoshopping themselves."
He added: “The smiles on faces said it all for me, I thought it was beautiful.... And this whole ‘sleevegate’ thing, just leave it alone."
After Princess Kate's statement, Sky News said an examination of the photo's meta data revealed it was saved in Adobe Photoshop twice on an Apple Mac on Friday and Saturday and the picture was taken on a Canon Camera.
The Princess is known to be a keen photographer, and revealed in 2021 that she takes so many family photographs that her children sometimes object."Everyone's like, 'Mummy, please stop taking photographs.'" she said.