Supermodel Cindy Crawford has admitted “maybe I think I look better than I do” as she opened up about the unretouched photo of her that was leaked online.

The photo – which went viral earlier this year – showed the 49-year-old star in black lingerie with cellulite, stretch marks and sun damage on her stomach, thighs and decolletage.

In a new interview with Elle Canada, Cindy has spoken about the picture, taken for a magazine shoot in 2013, for the first time, insisting it had been digitally altered to make her look worse.

Cindy said: “I know my body, and I know it’s not perfect, but maybe I have a false body image; maybe I think I look better than I do. I think that most women are hard on themselves. We think we look worse than we do.

“So I assumed I fell into that category, even though that picture didn’t reflect what I saw when I looked in the mirror – even in the worst dressing-room lighting.”

But the model said she did not speak out at the time of the leak because she “felt really manipulated and conflicted,” by the positive reaction to the picture.

Cindy said: “Sometimes, the images that women see in magazine make them feel inferior – even though the intention is never to make anyone feel less.

“So somehow seeing a picture of me was like seeing a chink in the armour. Whether it was real or not isn’t relevant.”

She revealed the photographer told her: ” ‘Cindy, I’m going to send you the real one and it’s nothing like that. It’s clear that someone manipulated that image to make whatever was there worse.’ It was stolen and it was malicious.

“But there was so much positive reaction.”

At the time of the leak Cindy’s husband, businessman Rande Gerber, posted a seemingly unaltered picture of the model in a bikini on his Instagram account, showing a very different image of her body.