Over the past few days, we’ve all come to learn that the only thing more suspicious than a missing princess is a poorly edited photo of that princess. All the worse if it’s accompanied by a note allegedly written by the MIA monarch herself, saying she casually dabbles in Adobe Photoshop and got lost in the moment.

“Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing,” Catherine “Kate” Middleton, a.k.a. the Princess of Wales, apparently wrote on social media Monday, personally apologizing for doctoring an official photo of herself with her children. The photo, posted for Mother’s Day in the UK, first drew attention from suspicious royal watchers online, whose doubts were confirmed when the AP issued a “photo kill” for the image, declaring it manipulated. “I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused.”

The photo, the apology, the cheeky opening line, the image of Kate fiddling around with layers and smudge tools on Photoshop — it’s enough to be a royal scandal on its own. Posting a photo that news outlets felt the need to kill — an occurrence that’s basically unheard of — felt like such a flub on the royal family’s part that it drew even more attention to the image.

But the thing is that Kate hasn’t been seen in public since reportedly undergoing abdominal surgery in January, and her disappearance from public view has created a massive conspiracy theory with speculations ranging from a more-serious-than-reported medical procedure to rumors about Prince William cheating to speculation about the succession plan and King Charles’s cancer diagnosis.

The photo of Kate and her kids was supposed to squash those rumors, but the poor editing has only drawn more attention to the situation and the idea that the royal family is covering something up.

What exactly is weird about the photo? What is the editing hiding? And aren’t there people who do this type of thing for the royal family?

In an attempt to find some clarity, I spoke with Adam Griffin, a Los Angeles-based professional photographer who has experience with retouching and capturing private events. We combed over the photograph and went through all of the flubs, from how strange Kate’s hair is to the wonky way shadows fall and patterns disappear, that make the image look like an amateur retouched it. And as Griffin points out, as strange and illogical as Kate’s apology is, it’s one of the only ways to make sense of this entire saga.

Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

There’s a bit of a Streisand effect going on, right? Or at least an unforced error. If there was no photo, the story would be that it’s been a long time since Kate has been photographed or seen in public. But now there’s this botched photo and it seems like a coverup.

It is 100 percent a Streisand effect situation because posting a photo that was that egregiously Photoshopped? Amateur sleuths were able to point out all of the flaws in it, get it trending, and it made all the gossip magazines and websites. It almost would have been better not to do anything and say something like “The Princess of Wales is still recovering from surgery, she’s choosing to stay out of the spotlight until she’s feeling well. But she’s wishing everyone a Happy Mother’s Day.”

That could have been fine, or even post an old photo — a photo of her with the kids with a message like that, saying that she’s spending the day with her kids but she’s choosing to stay out of the public light. It was completely an unforced error.

Adam, you sent me a diagram — a marked-up version of the original photo, noting the things that stand out to you as retouching. Can you tell me what you’re seeing here?

I wanted to do my own sleuthing. First off, that right hand [marked as A], for some reason, is out of focus and blurry. There’s no reason for that considering it’s a static photo. The only reason that a [real] photo would have any kind of blur to it would be if there was motion with a slower shutter speed, in which case something else would be blurred — it wouldn’t just be one hand.

Or it was something that was retouched and done poorly. One of the hallmarks of event photography is that you’re always capturing movement. There’s ways to capture movement at a certain shutter speed and above where you’re not going to have a hand moving that looks like that. It looks........

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