Princess Kate has been defended as the retouching of royal photos was labelled "part of the creative process" by the curator of a new exhibition.
Alessandro Nasini, the curator behind an exhibition at Buckingham Palace celebrating 100 years of royal photographs, said retouching remains a vital tool in royal portrait photography.
Retouching is a photography tool which can vary from cropping an image to removing backgrounds.
Nasini has defended the practice of retouching images despite controversy over a Mother's Day photo taken by Prince William earlier this year.
Many of the photos on display to the public at the King's Gallery have been retouched, according to the curator.
Nasini's comments came two months after six major picture agencies issued "kill notices" to withdraw a photograph of the Princess of Wales with her children for Mother's Day.
They claimed it had been digitally altered. Kate, 42, later admitted she experimented with editing the family photo.
As a result, there are now much tougher media guidelines over image manipulation amid concerns that the public has to be able to trust that pictures are genuine in an era of AI and deepfakes.
Despite this, Nasini has asserted retouching is a vital tool in his industry.
He said: "I am not familiar with those particular [media tests] but retouching per se has always been part of photography really since the inception of photography.
"It's very important specifically for portrait photography because it's a creative process. It's not press photography, it's not reportage, it's not commercial photography.
"It's just simply a tool that has always been used by photographers to translate their vision, the aesthetics, into the final print. It's part of the creative process. It's just one of the tools."
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The exhibition, open to tourists until October 6, reveals the stories behind many iconic royal photographs.
For instance, one photo shows Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, Princess Alexandra and the Duchess of Kent all holding their newborn babies.
It was taken by Princess Margaret's husband Lord Snowdon as a personal token of thanks for Sir John Peel, the royal obstetrician who delivered all four babies within two months in 1964.
The babies are Prince Edward, Lady Sarah Chatto, James Ogilvy and Lady Helen Taylor, who all turned 60 this year.
