photo-based ilustration ~ slowly but surely

illustration for high-fashion boutique ~ (embiggenable)

Well before digital cameras hit the photo making sphere (circa 1995), I was making commercial ad photo-illustrations utilizing film cameras, a scanner and an early version of Photoshop.

Unlike the all-digital picture making world of today, in the circa 1995 world the process of making a photo-based illustration moved along at a glacial pace ... make the picture, send film to a lab, wait (usually over night)for processed film, make a color print*, scan the print and then, go to work making the illustration using Photoshop.

FYI, given the state of desktop computer and Photoshop technology at the time, I was not exactly working at light-speed. RAM was both extremely expensive and there were limits to how much processing speed you could cram into a machine. With large files, some Photoshop functions allowed for a bathroom and coffee break while the machine ground away performing a task which requires just a second or less in today's high-speed digital workflow.

*when the end result was to be a photo-based illustration, I made my pictures with color negative film because of its extended dynamic range as well as the ability, when making a print, to the exact color balance I wanted. I made my prints using a condenser head enlarger rather than the standard diffusion head enlarger in order to obtain maximum sharpness.