Photographs vs Technical Illustrations

Although photography is a big part of what we do, there are several reasons to use a technical illustration in place of a photograph.

• Photographs tend to have areas of extreme light and dark that hide necessary details, or glare from reflective surfaces and distracting backgrounds.
• Sometimes the subject matter is too large, too small, or too inaccessible.
• Illustrations are cleaner and can contain only the details that need to be shown.
• Illustrations hold their quality, especially in 3rd or 4th generation copies while photographs tend to turn muddy or black.

Here are three before and after examples of photographs we used as a basis for technical illustrations. The computer hardware company’s intent was too include the photographs in one of several manuals we were developing for them, but when we showed them what we could achieve with a technical illustration, they quickly changed their minds and wanted the illustrations instead. All illustrations were created in Adobe Illustrator.

[Photos: Sun Microsystems. Illustrations: Eric Lian]