Kate 'slimmed down' in altered photo

The Grazia magazine cover showing a digitally slimmed-down Duchess of Cambridge on her wedding day to Prince William. Photo / Supplied

A British magazine has admitted it altered a picture of Kate Middleton on her wedding day but claims it did not mean to make her look slimmer.

In its May 9 edition, the weekly magazine Grazia showed the Duchess of Cambridge standing alone and appearing almost impossibly thin.

The fashion magazine, owned by Bauer media, said it doctored the original image of William and Kate leaving Westminster Abbey.

First Prince William was removed from the photo, and then Kate's right arm was reattached by using a mirror image of her left, to give the impression she was posing on her own. But the editing process also sizably reduced her already svelte waistline.

After investigating a complaint, the Press Complaints Commission said: "The magazine explained how the image had been altered to remove the arm of Prince William so that the Duchess could be featured on the cover alone. This involved mirroring one of the Duchess' arms and an inadvertent result of the change was the slimming of her waist."

Grazia said it had wanted "a great image of the Duchess on her own, but all the photographs had the Duke in too ... so we asked our reproduction house to remove him ... [common practice among glossy magazines]. This would have left the Duchess with only one arm, so they copied over her arm to complete the picture."

Grazia said it "would like to reassure all our readers that we did not purposely make any alteration to the Duchess of Cambridge's image to make her appear slimmer ..."

The statement added: "Grazia ... would never 'slim down' a picture of a female role model."

The airbrushing of the Duchess comes after L'Oreal was last month forced to pull adverts featuring Pretty Woman star Julia Roberts and supermodel Christy Turlington after admitting the images had been digitally retouched.

- Independent