Time lapse videos show how beauty retouching really happens

We see the beauty campaigns and editorials everyday: women with flawless skin, lush lashes, and perfectly tamed hair. What we rarely see is what those photos were like before the retouching — until now.

Rare Digital Art, a New York City based retouching company that has worked with everyone from Vogue to H&M, is giving us a behind the scenes look at what really happens on the retouching end. Founder and head retoucher Elizabeth Moss has created three time-lapse videos that show editing done on three photos the company has worked on.

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The three videos condense hours of retouching work into just 90 seconds — showing how lashes are defined, flyaways are tamed, and even how pores are added to the skin.

“These videos are unique because none of the high end retouchers make these type of videos,” Moss says in an interview with PetaPixel. “So the quality of the other before and after retouching videos available online are pretty terrible and not at all representative of what is typically done on high fashion editorials and campaigns.”

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The work done by Rare Digital Art is indeed impressive, but it also reminds us that the women we see on billboards and in the pages of magazines didn’t wake up like that.