The search for color in fine art photography found early forms in dye sublimation prints made from Cibachrome - like "Sam's" by Patty Carroll from her 1980's series on Chicago Hot Dog stands.

While composite imagery had been practiced before 1900, and the darkroom mastery of Jerry Uelsman stood almost without equal in the 1970s, influencing the decade of the 1980s was the staged and composited photographs of an Canadian artist named Jeff Wall and Buffalo NY photographer Cindy Sherman. Ten years later the arrival of Photoshop version number 1 would begin the crush of analogue methods into chemical vapor. Yet for the period of the late 1970s early 1980s, Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman's cinematically derived compositions would be the new contemporary discourse.

Giving images impact, outside the camera, has a long history in photography and publication of photographs. By 1991 and the release of Photoshop version 1.0, airbrush, oil paint, litho films, and other retouching tools were crushed by computer rendering and digital manipulation. Above actor Humphrey Bogart has his hand-bearing cigarette removed for a film still advertising the 1949 Columbia picture "Knock on Any Door".

Hunter’s Home, Tahlequah OK - Seroco Camera (1904) using historically correct hand-coated, dry plate film on glass, and original film holders.