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This is a positive story in a publication that Donald Trump has consistently praised – except for one issue. The front-page image, the president decreed, ""could be the worst ever".

Time's praise to the president's involvement in mediating a Gaza ceasefire, headlining its early November edition, was presented alongside a photo of Trump shot from a low angle while the sun behind his head.

The result, he says, is ""terrible".

"Time wrote a quite favorable story about me, but the picture may be the lowest quality in history", Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“My hair was ‘disappeared’, and then there was an object above my head that appeared as a hovering crown, but extremely small. Very odd! I have never liked being photographed from below, but this is a awful image, and it deserves to be called out. What is their goal, and why?”

The president has expressed no secret of his desire to feature on Time’s cover and achieved this on four occasions in the previous year. The preoccupation has reached Trump’s golf clubs – years ago, the magazine asked him to remove fabricated front pages shown in a few of his establishments.

The latest edition’s photo was taken by a photographer for Bloomberg at the White House on October 5.

Its angle was unflattering to the president's jawline and throat – an opening that the governor of California Gavin Newsom seized, with his communications team posting a modified photo with the offending area pixelated.

{The hostages from Israel held in Gaza have been liberated under the initial stage of Donald Trump's peace plan, together with a freeing of Palestinian inmates. The deal may become a major success of his next term, and it might signify a key shift for the region.

Meanwhile, a support for Trump's image has come from a surprising origin: the communications chief at the Russian foreign ministry stepped in to condemn the "revealing" photo selection.

It's remarkable: a image reveals far more about those who picked it than about the person in it. Just unwell persons, people filled with spite and resentment –possibly even deviants – could have selected such an image", the official shared on Telegram.

"And given the complimentary photos of President Biden that that magazine used on the cover, despite his physical infirmity, the situation is self-revealing for the publication", she added.

The answer to the president's inquiries – why did they choose this, and why? – could be related to creatively capturing a sense of power says a picture editor, Guardian Australia’s picture editor.

"The actual photo itself technically is good," she explains. "They selected this photo because they wanted Trump to look impressive. Staring up at someone gives a sense of their grandeur and his expression actually looks thoughtful and almost somewhat divine. It's uncommon you see pictures of him in such a serene moment – the image has a softness to it."

Trump’s hair seems to vanish because the light from behind has washed out that area of the image, generating a radiant circle, she explains. And, while the story’s headline pairs nicely with his facial expression in the image, "one cannot constantly gratify the subject matter."

Nobody enjoys being captured from low angles, and although all of the conceptual elements of the image are very strong, the appearance are unflattering."

The Guardian contacted Time magazine for comment.