How a Beauty Campaign Gets Retouched
Published October 31, 2026
Beauty campaigns are shot close and seen large, and they often sell a product by showing what it does. Here's the order the work usually follows. It's a general process, not one client's job.
1. Brief and product claims
This is the step people skip and regret. What does the image claim the product does? Where will it run? Retouching lashes on a mascara ad or skin on a foundation ad can mislead, and regulators have ruled on exactly that. Retouched image label rules has examples. Settle these questions first, and put them in the brief.
2. Selects and composites
The team chooses final frames and marks anything to borrow from other frames: a better eye, a cleaner strand of hair. Doing this early matters, because any skin work done before a swap may have to be redone.
3. Clean-up
Next comes everything that shouldn't be in the picture: temporary marks, flyaways, makeup that has moved, stray hairs on the backdrop. It's mostly invisible work, and it makes up a lot of the hours.
4. Skin
Skin is shaped by working with the light already in the image, keeping pores and texture. It gets checked at full size and at final size. Natural skin retouching covers what usually stays.
5. Makeup and product
Lip and liner edges get cleaned, and the product shade is matched to the real thing. In a beauty image the product color is often the point of the ad, so it's checked against a sample or standard. See how to keep product color consistent.
6. Color across the set
With several faces or shades in a campaign, skin tones and overall color have to feel like one set while staying true to each person. Any grade goes on here, after the correction.
7. Versions and proof
The approved master becomes each size: print, outdoor, web, social. Print files get a proof, because skin is where a color shift shows first. For more on this work, see our beauty retouching page and one campaign, every format.
Price and turnaround
$40 to $500 per image, depending on how complex the image is and what you need delivered. 24 hours to 2 weeks, depending on how many images there are and our workload.
Get a quote
Send us the number of images, a sample or link, what you need delivered and your deadline.
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