Wander into one of Tombstone's "Old Time" photo studios along Allen Street and bets are you'll see the likes of deceased legends Doc Holliday and Diamond Lil mugging for the camera.

Holliday, complete with his trademark double-barrel shotgun, sports a familiar intimidating stare. Lil does her best to tickle the imagination as the strap of her saloon dress trickles off the end of her shoulder.

A row of dust-laden brandy and whiskey bottles line the saloon bar setting behind them.

The photographer poses the two for a moment and releases the shutter. In less than a minute, a $1,000 Mitsubishi printer yields a sharp, sepia-toned authentic "Old Time" photograph.

So it may not be the real Doc and Lil, but not a bad-looking job for their modern-day doppelgangers.

"Most people think that old-time photos is just to come in a get a picture," says Natalie Lawrence, manager of the Tombstone Photo Studio, 507 E. Allen St.

"But really it's about entertaining people."

Lawrence says her photo studio, which began in 1994, started with just 30 costumes for picture-seekers to browse through. Today, that number has stretched to well beyond 200 and continues to grow as the studio receives donated clothes in addition to making new ones themselves.

"Part of the fun is just coming back here and getting dressed up in something Western," Lawrence says of the abounding cowboy hats, boots and six-shooters that adorn the studio's walls.

"Sometimes the transformation is amazing. I'll have people come back here and I'll think, 'OK, they're just simple tourists,' and then get them dressed up and it's like, 'Wow, he really looks Western,'" Lawrence said.

"It's amazing the transformation."

The Tombstone Photo Studio is one of three old-time portrait studios in the town. The others, Madame Mustache Old Thyme Photo Parlour, 455 E. Allen St., and The Can-Can Old Time Photos, on the corner of Fourth and Allen streets, all offer the same novelty dress-up and photography service, but vary from each other in some aspects.

While all the stores have made the jump from film to digital photography, prints at Tombstone Photo Studio and Madame Mustache are made using the dye-sublimation process.

A second-to-none printing method, dye-sublimation uses high-end printers to transfer cyan, magenta, yellow and clear colored "ribbon" in four passes to produce razor-sharp images resistant to fingerprint smudges.

The Can-Can employs the use of Xerox inkjet printers on acid-free archival paper which owner Jim "Lefty" Newbauer says will "last forever."

"We have hundreds of costumes and three different sets," Newbauer says of The Can-Can, which sits on the same site as the old 1800s-era restaurant of the same name.

"It's the biggest in town," he added.

Newbauer's claim might very well be true, as The Can-Can is the only studio of the three that doesn't deal in souvenir sales.

The interior has a large working space and a custom-built brass pipe rig that allows floodlights to be moved around to light the different saloon and Western-themed scenes.

"We try to make people enjoy their time in Tombstone," Newbauer said.

As for the tourists getting their photos taken, the novelty of a photograph similar to that of Splash Mountain photo lore isn't lost.

"Do you want me slutty or not?" says Carmen Hall to her husband Don as they browse the women's outfits at Madame Mustache.

The two are making their third trip through Tombstone on the road back home to Lake of the Ozarks, Mo.

"We've never done it," Carmen says about having their old-time photo taken.

"Don's really into the western movies, and we thought it would be cool to have one of these photos," she said.

"He can put it up in his man cave."