Vanity Fair Denies Photoshopping Prince George Cover to Give Prince William a Fuller Head of Hair

Mag admits to certain tweaks but claims to have left the 32-year-old's famous bald spot alone

By Natalie Finn Jul 15, 2014 10:22 PMTags
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If Prince William's hair looks different on the August cover of Vanity Fair...altered follicles are in the eye of the beholder.

In response to questions about possible adjustments made to its latest cover, featuring Will, Kate Middleton and Prince George in honor of the wee royal's first birthday, the magazine admitted to certain things—but denied giving George's dad a digital hair transplant.

"We did not Photoshop the cover to make Prince William appear to have more hair," a VF spokesperson tells E! News. However, their aesthetics experts didn't leave the cover pic entirely alone.

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"We gave the image a poster-like palette," the mag revealed. "We added some shadow to Prince William to make the white type more legible, and to place more emphasis on Prince George."

But regardless of what happened from the time that photo—originally taken during the family's visit to Sydney's Taronga Zoo in April—was snapped to when it hit newsstands, it remains a doozy of cuteness, the royal couple sweetly doting on their firstborn son.

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VF also cropped the photo in a way that left most of William's famously thinning pate out of the frame. Kate herself joked about her husband's bald spot when they stopped to watch alpacas being sheared at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney, telling him that he might want to put some of that extra wool to good use atop his head.

"You need it more than me," she reportedly said. 

And now that everything is put under the microscope that is the blogosphere, questions arise all the time about photos and what publishers are doing or not doing to them.

Us Weekly was accused of airbrushing Prince George back in April, and the mag explained: "The original image used for the Prince George cover was dark and bluish in tone and needed to be given an overall color shift for printing purposes. By no means did we go in and alter the color of his eyes or cheeks in this process."