Prince Harry, Meghan Markle dragged into royal picture editing drama after Kate snafu

A 2019 portrait of the royal couple on their son’s christening day is now under scrutiny after Kate Middleton’s recent Photoshop snafu.

With unprecedented focus on the royal family’s back catalogue of portraits following an awkward Photoshop bungle, a 2019 image of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is now under the microscope.

The photo – featuring the entire royal family, including the late Queen Elizabeth II, on their son Prince Archie’s christening day – has been labelled as “digitally enhanced” by global picture agency Getty, sparking a furious response from the photographer.

The official royal portrait in honour of Archie’s christening in 2019. Picture: Chris Allerton/SussexRoyal via Getty Images

Once the caption edit was made public, Christopher Allerton denied the claim, telling the Daily Mail bluntly it was “a load of cobblers [rubbish]”.

He added that the portrait, taken on May 6, had required “very minimal tuning”.

In another statement to the UK’s Express, Mr Allerton insisted the image “has not been manipulated and was distributed to the best of my knowledge in adherence with the submission guidelines required by Getty Images, via the Palace Press office”.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are yet to comment on the situation.

It comes as the photo agency revisits the archive of images released by the royal family in recent years, following a Photoshop snafu by Kate Middleton amid frenzied speculation about her welfare.

“Getty Images is undertaking a review of handout images and in accordance with its editorial policy is placing an editor’s note on images where the source has suggested they could be digitally enhanced,” a Getty spokesman said in the wake of the incident.

William and Kate have been at the centre of unprecedented social media speculation. Picture: Owen Humphreys - WPA Pool/Getty Images

The agency has since also added an editor’s note to a picture taken by Kate of the late Queen with her great-grandchildren, declaring it too had been manipulated.

The online furore hit boiling point last week after the world’s biggest photo agencies issued a mandatory “kill notice” on a new Palace-issued Mother’s Day photo of the princess and her three kids, claiming it had been digitally “manipulated”.

Just hours later, Kate herself took the extraordinary step of releasing a statement taking ownership of the mistake.

“Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing,” she said.

“I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused.”

The picture that first caused all the uproar last week. Picture: Kensington Palace/Instagram

Over the weekend, William and Kate made a surprise appearance at a farm shop in Windsor, where the future queen looked “healthy and happy” – seemingly shrugging off unsubstantiated rumours about her welfare.

Footage of the outing, exclusively obtained by entertainment website TMZ and The Sun, was then published, showing the couple carrying shopping as they strolled through the car park.

Meanwhile, it was confirmed on Tuesday that British police have now been “asked to look” into disturbing allegations that hospital staff at The London Clinic attempted to access Kate’s private medical records.

It followed reports at least one employee at the world-renowned Marylebone facility – which is the preferred hospital for many royals, including King Charles – tried to obtain details of the Princess of Wales’ abdominal surgery in January.

It is a criminal offence for any healthcare staff to access the medical records of a patient without consent of the organisation’s data controller.

Originally published as Prince Harry, Meghan Markle dragged into royal picture editing drama after Kate snafu