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I agree with what your are saying, but bored teenagers don't have to use photoshop. They can get ahold of vintage typewriter. There are always some at the flea market. Figuring out what content to put in is getting easier using the internet. Finally getting all the finishing touches like printing to paper, then filling it in with the typewriter, then aging the paper can all be done pretty well with practice.

The issue is looking for the mistakes. My opinion is one mistake on this document is that the printing of the form itself (before the rest is typed in) does not accurately model or simulate vintage printing techniques. I am no expert but when I compared the image to my own vintage early 60's official document (printed in Boston, MA), the Kenyan one is a little too perfect in how the printing looks especially line to line and from edge to edge. My document fades a little to the right and gets a little darker to the bottom. But looking at the block in the lower right "I_____ Deputy Registrar .... Office this" that text is just a little too perfectly printed IMO.

Good idea to look at the printing. Much of that, in comparison to your own document from Boston, would depend on the amount of ink. I, too, see the occassional fading you describe on newspapers. But like you, I'm not a printing expert.

What I want to know is how to verify the official capacity of Messrs. E.F. Lavender, Miller, and Joshua Simon Oduya in February 1964.

Another thought: PCs support many different picture formats. JPEG is great for, oh, 98% of the content on the web. But this is a classical case where one of the larger, lossless formats like GIF would be more appropriate. Looking at the printing per your previous post, I noticed many JPEG artifacts around the light-dark edges. These make the analysis of the type you suggested more difficult.

“I agree with what your are saying, but bored teenagers don’t have to use photoshop. They can get ahold of vintage typewriter. There are always some at the flea market. Figuring out what content to put in is getting easier using the internet. Finally getting all the finishing touches like printing to paper, then filling it in with the typewriter, then aging the paper can all be done pretty well with practice.”

OHm c’mon, the details here are beyond the expertise of teens, at least American teens. First of all, they would have concocted a birth certificate, and not a certified copy with a date 3 years after the fact; and one in which the logic works perfectly. Right down to the usage of the word “nil.” That’s way beyond the sophistication of a teen.

There is a lot of healthy skepticism on TS, but there is a ton of too-cute-by-half self-flagellators treating this too deeply.