President Obama’s Birth Certificate PDF has “Layers”

Video Wall ^ | 4/27/11 | video wall

[Mr. K]

When viewing the PDF in Adobe the text can be removed and added in Layers

You can compress all layers down to one, but someone clearly did not do that last step to make a good forgery

[StonyMan451]

note the shape and size- they are exactly the same.

I only see the date once on this PDF. What are you comparing it to?

[Mr. K]

A PDF of a scanned image starts with ONLY one layer- the image.

This one is made up of multiple layers

[unixfox]

You can pull the PDF file off the White House Website and see the layers with a PDF editor.

That is until they replace it with ANOTHER copy that won't allow the layers to be seen.

[camerongood210]

I just pulled the PDF from the WH site into Illustrator, and it does indeed have layers

[mel]

Dp they have white out

[youngidiot]

Was he not named Barry Sorento first?

[Sir Gawain]

My graphics expert friend comments:

the more interesting thing about the way the scanner made the layers is that the date in 2011 was in the same layer as some of the supposedly older information. they should have been in different layers, but for some reason they were identified by very sensitive scanning equipment as being the same. if there is a red flag here, that is it.

[runninglips]

I am going to have to try that, thanks for the idea and the bare essentials.

[Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!]

If you are starting out with this...

It and the person creating it; is not official or offishal.

[jersey117]

Also,,what about the fonts? There were only typewriters in ‘61.......

You'd think they might have learned something from the Rather fiasco.

[Mr. K]

So you are thinking Obama scanned the image with OCR software?

[Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!]

Exactly. And someone JUST HAD TO ADD (Stanley) and if they said negro instead of African it would have also been more believable. (Only a liberal would think AFRICAN)

[SoldierDad]

So, do Wookies have layers too?

[paulycy]

Pdf docs usually do have layers. They aren’t static images like. Jpg files. Look up OCR- optical character recognition. Acrobat pulls out the text and adds it on a separate layer so it can be searchable. I’ll post more on it when im not on my phone.

Your points are well taken. However:

1) When opened in other pdf editors these layers do not appear. The pdf appears as one single image.

2)If the text were to be searchable text it would be consistent text in one electronic font and would not be a combination of dark and light (edited) characters as shown in the examples. This is more editing at the pixel level and NOT at the character level. There is editing on the signatures also and they would NOT be OCRed.

So I don't think the OCR layer theory holds up under this evidence.

[GunRunner]

It's called Optical Character Recognition software. When you scan something into a PDF, Acrobat scans the text into different layers and makes the text searchable.

You can deactivate it when you scan something into a PDF, but whoever scanned it obviously forgot to turn it off, and now because of this we will be treated to many more years of wild conspiracy theories, all because some government employee made a rookie mistake.

[glennaro]

I think an interesting exercise would be an attempt to demonstrate the document released is legitimate. That is, despite all the evidence presented thusfar that it appears to be a fake, if it can be demonstrated that despite evidence to the contrary it could be legitimate, then the issue of the birth certificate would be diminished and we can focus on other concerns such as his parentage.

Alternatively, if the exercise shows the document cannot be legitimate it would present solid evidence it was faked.

[Genoa]

Can anyone tell me why only some of the black parts are removed while other black parts stay with the green background??

[for-q-clinton]

I find it interesting that the signatures are on a different layer than the text.

The initial link says they think someone took the negative and made it readable for us by putting it on green background. But how would the scanner separate the signature from the other text? And why are some sigs on different layers?

[for-q-clinton]

how about the signatures? Why are some on different layers?

[Smokeyblue]

I did it myself in Inkscape.

It’s layered.