When a 'Simple' Makeup Adjustment Became a Full-Blown Lesson in Continuity

On a recent indie feature, we had a scene where the lead actress’s character was supposed to have a faint, almost invisible, scratch on her cheek. The makeup artist, bless her heart, really leaned into 'faint', we're talking barely-there. What worked initially was the artistic vision: it looked incredibly natural on close-ups, selling the character's understated resilience. What didn't work, and became a continuity nightmare, was its near-invisibility across different lighting setups and slight angle variations. Every time we moved the camera or adjusted a light, we were squinting at the monitor, asking, 'Is the scratch still there? Is it the same scratch?' We ended up having to light around it, bring in a dedicated makeup touch-up artist just for that tiny detail, and even slightly enhance it with a touch more pigmentation in later takes, sacrificing a bit of the 'natural' feel for the sake of consistency. It taught me that sometimes, for the camera's sake, a subtle detail needs to be a little less subtle in reality to read consistently. How do other departments balance hyper-realism with the practical needs of shoot-to-shoot continuity?