CASE STUDY
Rare Beauty : Building a Retouching Foundation That Scales With the Brand
For a brand launching into the beauty market with a clear point of view and high visual expectations, early production decisions set the tone for everything that follows. Getting it right from the start isn't just efficient, it's brand-defining.
Rare Beauty needed more than a retouching vendor. They needed a post-production partner embedded in the process early, one that could establish the visual language, build the guidelines, and grow alongside the brand as volume increased and complexity compounded.
We were brought in at the ground level. What we built became the foundation their content has scaled on ever since.
Scale Without Compromising
A partnership built to grow with the brand, not just deliver a project
What started as foundational retouching support grew into an embedded creative operations function. As Rare Beauty's campaign cadence increased and their visual identity matured, our workflows scaled alongside them, maintaining visual consistency across a growing library of assets, formats, and markets.
By operating as an extension of their internal team rather than an outside vendor, we were able to anticipate needs, flag issues early, and keep quality uncompromising even as output volumes climbed.
The brands building lasting content programs aren't just hiring better vendors. They're building better partnerships.
Establish QC Standards
Building a retouching language the whole team could trust
One of the first things we did was establish a shared visual standard, a retouching bible that defined how Rare Beauty's assets should look, feel, and be approved, regardless of who was in the room.
This meant codifying skin retouching philosophy, color grading anchors, and asset finish standards across every format: e-commerce, editorial, campaign, and social. QC workflows were built in parallel, so the team could scale volume without sacrificing quality control.
With clear standards in place, onboarding new team members, briefing photographers, and reviewing outputs became faster and more consistent across every touchpoint.
Maximizing Content
Designing assets from the start to perform across every channel
From the earliest shoots, we advised on capture strategies that would extend the value of every frame, clean layering, format-agnostic compositions, and flexible lighting setups that enabled multi-use outputs without additional shooting days.
A single hero capture could yield e-commerce stills, social crops, motion-ready plates, and campaign variations. That kind of multiplier effect doesn't happen by accident, it's planned at the production stage, and it starts with having post-production thinking in the room before the shutter fires.
