/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>3964465
They shot transparencies, or slides. A transparency is like a slide, but bigger - the two most popular sizes were 4x5" and 8x10". These, or 35mm slides, would be drum scanned, on high end scanners that used lasers to read the film spinning in a rotating glass drum. Before that technology existed, they'd do manual separations, where they'd make 4 color printing plates photographically.

A more technical article:

http://printwiki.org/Color_Separation

Transparencies were typically shot on what are called copy stands - a very stable physical platform with camera with a 4x5" or 8x10" back - that's the actual film size. They used very specific lighting systems for even lighting across the whole image. The entire process was an art form in itself. One of my first real career jobs was working with transparencies and scanning and editing them. There are still places left who can shoot them, and there are still labs and service bureaus who have drum scanners. (they were very expensive to buy, and you had to have a service contract because they broke down often)(And they could be pretty large - they're not desktop scanners.