Makeup artist Wayne Goss has exposed the big secret of beauty YouTubers.

There’s a reason your makeup will never look as “flawless” as your favourite beauty YouTubers – and it’s got nothing to do with your skills.

Makeup artist (and fellow YouTuber) Wayne Goss has exposed the “trickery” he alleges more and more makeup artists and beauty YouTubers are using in the videos, slamming it as “fundamentally wrong”.

The secret? A skin-smoothing camera filter that he believes is akin to “living photoshop”.

“This is one of the most fundamentally important videos I’ve ever done,” he begins the video entitled “WARNING. YOU’RE BEING LIED TO. PLEASE WATCH. THANK YOU.”

Starting the video wearing no makeup and using only natural light Goss, who has over two million subscribers and his own makeup brush line, first demonstrates the difference professional lighting can make, a feature that has become a given in most makeup tutorials.

“I’m really honest about how I film, in that I film with this big strip of lights. And when these lights are turned on, they make you look infinitely better so people go ‘Your skin looks so good Wayne, you’re ageing backwards’. That’s not the case,” he says.

“That’s why I tend to look better in videos than I do in real life. I’ve always been honest about it.”

Left: In natural light, right: professional lighting. Image: YouTube/WayneGoss

However some are going a step further with their real life 'editing'.

Goss says he first saw the 'trick' in a video of a well-known - and unnamed - makeup artist in her mid to late fifties where her "face and hands looked like they were twenty years younger", something that wasn't in a different video of her filmed in the same month.

"Then I came across another video of a woman applying makeup to a model and the model's skin was normal - it had a lot of pigment to it, a lot of freckling and then she started applying these foundations and suddenly it was like "pooof". Her skin was like porcelain," he said. (Post continues after gallery.)

When the makeup artist pushed the product to the camera to show was she was using, something strange happened.

"As she put it to the camera, the 'filter' in the background that was placed over the model's skin stopped working and you could see all the pigmentation and the layers of foundation. And then as she moved the product away, the filter came back in and she looked poreless and flawless again," he said.

"It is so fundamentally wrong. I started to Google this and it's basically living photoshop."

To prove the incredible difference it makes, Goss bought one and demonstrated its effects on camera.

Left: In professional lighting versus right: with the filter. Image: YouTube/WayneGoss

"I've got nothing on my skin, all that I've added is the filter and it has bleached out my skin to such an extent, smoothed it.. and the funny thing is I can manipulate it, make it more or less or do anything I want," he said.

"It cost like 100 pounds or something like that, and it is so fundamentally wrong."

He said he's seeing more and more videos featuring this kind of "trickery".

"It is trickery because it is giving the illusion that you can achieve this kind of look - and this is extreme - with these products when you can't, when it's not possible. Foundations, makeup can make you look more beautiful, more radiant, more wonderful but they can't do this," he said.

Just a bit of a difference. Image: YouTube/WayneGoss

"It's just wrong on so many levels."

Disabling the comments on his video to prevent speculation over who the unnamed YouTubers he was talking about could be, Goss says he just wants people to be aware of the misleading practice.

"I'm trying to bring to your attention that you're never going to look like this. Ever. You just can't, because it's not physically possible," he says.

"This is why we feel so ugly about ourselves because we are seeing these people and pictures on Instagram with the filters and the lights and now we're seeing them in living, breathing motion and it is fundamentally wrong."

Listen: Zoe Foster Blake shares her beauty must-haves and tips for busy women.