'The most terrible ever': Donald Trump rails against Time's 'extremely poor' cover image.

This is a favorable story in a magazine that Trump has long exalted – except for one issue. The magazine's cover photo, he stated, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time's praise to Trump's role in brokering a Gaza ceasefire, headlining its early November edition, was paired with a photograph of the president shot from a low angle and with the sun positioned behind him.

The result, Trump claims, is ""terrible".

"The publication wrote a relatively good story about me, but the image may be the lowest quality in history", Trump wrote on his preferred network.

“My hair was obscured, and then there was an object above my head that appeared as a floating crown, but very tiny. Really weird! I have never liked being photographed from below, but this is a super bad image, and it deserves to be called out. Why did they choose this, and why?”

Donald Trump has shown obvious his ambition to feature on Time’s cover and achieved this on four occasions in the previous year. This fixation has made it as far as his golf courses – in 2017, the editors demanded to remove mocked up covers on display at several of his venues.

This issue's photograph was captured by a photographer for a news agency at the White House on 5 October.

Its angle did no favours for Trump’s chin and neck – an opening that the governor of California Gavin Newsom took advantage of, with his communications team tweeting a version with the criticized section pixelated.

{The living Israeli hostages detained in Gaza have been freed under the initial stage of Donald Trump's peace plan, alongside a release of Palestinian detainees. The deal could be a signature achievement of the president's renewed tenure, and it may represent a key shift for the Middle East.

Meanwhile, a support for his portrayal has come from an unexpected source: the director of information at the Russian foreign ministry stepped in to criticise the "self-incriminating" photo selection.

It's remarkable: a image says more about those who picked it than about the subject. Just unwell persons, people obsessed with malice and resentment –perhaps even perverts – could have picked this picture", she posted on the messaging platform.

"And given the complimentary photos of President Biden that the periodical displayed on the cover, despite his physical infirmity, the story is simply self-incriminating for Time", she added.

The explanation for the president's inquiries – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – may be something to do with creatively capturing a feeling of authority according to an imaging expert, an Australian publication's photo editor.

The photograph technically is professionally taken," she says. "They selected this photo because they wanted the president to look commanding. Gazing upward evokes a feeling of their grandeur and Trump’s face actually looks contemplative and almost a bit ethereal. It’s not often you see pictures of him in such a calm instance – the image has a softness to it."

The president's hair looks erased because the sunlight behind him has washed out that area of the image, generating a radiant circle, she explains. And, while the story’s headline marries well with Trump’s expression in the image, "it's impossible to satisfy the individual in question."

"No one likes being photographed from below, and although all of the conceptual elements of the image are highly effective, the appearance are unflattering."

The Guardian reached out to the magazine for a statement.