While the old-school images might seem odd, the new production method and a barrage of features both seen and unseen will make the licenses, officials say, virtually impossible to forge. Most critically, they say, the new licenses are laser engraved on rigid polycarbonate, replacing the current process of printing photos on more flexible material, which they say can be much more easily altered or fabricated. (While the photos at the D.M.V. will still be taken in color, the engraving is done in grayscale, hence the Ansel Adams feel.)

The new cards are so stiff that they sound like a compact disc when dropped. Personal data is also engraved, as is a “ghost image,” a small, second portrait of the driver that will float in a transparent window and will be visible from the front and the back. All of the elements are then fused together into what the department calls “a solid, monolithic structure that cannot be separated into layers and tampered with.”

After the success of a similarly designed United States passport card, New York is the second state to adopt this technology, which incorporates black-and-white images into a full color design. The first, in 2009, was Virginia. Since then, Pam Goheen, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, said the department had not seen a “credible” forgery of a Virginia license, adding that those who tried had failed miserably.

“They’re really awful,” she said.

Still, the change in New York has generated some controversy.

A losing bidder for the license contract, De La Rue North America, has sued the Department of Motor Vehicles, contending that an eight-year deal with CBN Secure Technologies Inc., a United States subsidiary of the Canadian Bank Note Company, was granted unfairly. The contract for the production of the new licenses is worth up to $88.5 million, but department officials believe the actual cost could be closer to $70 million.