Alphonse Bertillon standardized the mug shot and the evidence picture and developed what he called photographie métrique (metric photography). Bertillon intended this system to enable its user to precisely reconstruct the dimension of a particular space and the placement of objects in it, or to measure the object represented. Such pictures documented a crime sceneand the potential clues in itprior to its being disturbed in any way. Bertillon used special mats printed with cadres métriques (metric frames) which were mounted along the sides of these photographs. Included among these photographies métriques are those Bertillon called photographies stéréometriques (stereometric photographs), which pictured front and side views of a particular object.

By 1854, efforts were underway in police departments throughout the United States to create local archives of criminal images. These included daguerreotype portraits of criminals and "rogues' galleries," which usually comprised cartes-de-visite placed in racks or assembled into albums. Volumes of mug shots were compiled by local police agencies as well as by private detective organizations such as the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Volumes containing records of aliens, for instance the itinerant Chinese population, were probably used for purposes of immigration control. From the 1880s on, identifying details and photographs were commonly featured in the "wanted" posters that were distributed widely to apprehend criminals.

Policemen themselves began to include photographs in albums either for private record, as in the case of Jesse Brown Cook's scrapbooks, or to publicize police activity, as in Thomas Byrnes' Professional Criminals of America (1886). Byrnes' book reproduced photographs of mostly "respectable" looking criminals with accompanying comments. Byrnes claimed that, contrary to popular opinion, criminals did not necessarily convey by their physical appearance the nature of their activities.