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Lady Gaga’s Vogue cover before and after reveals major Photoshop job

We know magazines touch up their covers, but a before-and-after photo comparison reveals that the Photoshop job on Vogue's recent Lady Gaga cover is way over the top, with the original photo bearing only a passing resemblance to what ended up on the canonical September issue this year.

Gaga leaked the heavily doctored cover back in early August via Twitter, saying, "Who else sees me channeling @RuPaul on the COVER of VOGUE. If only I was as fierce as you b****. I did try to come for you with that weave." Indeed, she looks spectacular in a long purple Marc Jacobs gown and an enormous frizzy blond hairdo poofing out a good foot in every direction. The Internet response was laudatory: The Hollywood Gossip described it as "fab", and celebrity news website Thatgrapejuice congratulated Gaga for "looking all flavours of fierce."

Well it turns out some of that fab and fierce was added post-production, because a still image pulled from a behind-the-scenes montage of the shoot reveals that on the day the photos were taken, Lady Gaga appeared very little like the woman on the cover of the magazine this month.

[See also: Spoof exposes unrealistic standards of beauty]

On the cover, the dress pulls in to an impossibly tiny circumference around the waist and knees — not so in the video. Her hair is also extremely doctored, shaped into a sphere as opposed to wildly flying off in all directions, and the dress looks like it's a totally different colour.

But Vogue, for one, doesn't seem to care. They actually included the final cover in the video montage, so the comparison is obviously not something they're trying to avoid. Perhaps it's the fact that Lady Gaga can be such an oversized, cartoonish character in her day-to-day life that leaves us almost expecting a doctored version of reality when we see her in the pages of a fashion magazine. Whatever the case, the cover certainly maintains her proud image as everyone's favourite "little monster."

To learn about this fall's fashion dos and don'ts, check out the video below.

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