No one believes that document is anything other than a piece of crap.
The trolls are just trying to keep busy.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/07/lessons-trolling-jihadists-state-department/54747/
The State Department of Hawaii: “We’ll Need That in Writing”
Trolling Style: Attrition. Back in May, the State Department of Hawaii was so sick of being asked for Obama’s birth certificate by Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett that they trolled him. Like the way a kitten plays with a ball of yarn (kittens do, that we’re told), they asked Bennett to write out his ridiculousness before they conceded the documents. Oh, and did we mention the media got ahold of those trolly memos—and no, we don’t think it was Bennett’s choice to supply them.
cynwoody is quite right to debunk the specific "25-yr-old tech" argument of ctdonath2 in that the official story has always been that hard copies of the certificate were sent via lawyer/courier to the White House where it was then converted to digital. Hence, any digital oddities or layers that may have existed (as ctdonath2 seems to suggest) in an Hawaiian file prior to April 2011 were "flattened" to toner and paper before being made available to the White House. To argue otherwise is to concede that Hawaii and the White House have been telling a crucial lie about how the document was transported. I'm guessing neither cynwoody nor ctdonath2 want to make such a concession.
cynwoody is also correct in pointing out that there are indeed readily, widely available combinations of scanning devices and scanning software that even a low-skilled or moderately skilled person could use to scan a piece of paper in such a way that the resulting computer file has multiple layers in it despite the absence of any human manipulation. Zullo and Zebest and others understand and state that to be the case.
Furthermore, it's important to understand that typically the algorithms those scanning processes use to optimize document information will appear to be somewhat random in how it determines what bits of the image should be separated onto a layer that has a simplified single-bit depth rendering of its elements. So it's not completely surprising that a signature (or a numeric code) may be discovered to have been broken between letters in such away that some of it is isolated onto a single-bit-depth mask layer and some of it is left as a multi-bit image in which the gradation is still visible where the edges of the ink lines blend into their background. Again the document experts who are alleging forgery understand that and they make no attempt to hide it.
Where cynwoody and Dr. Conspiracy, et al are fatally wrong is that there is no way to explain the particular kind of layering observed in the White House PDF as being the result of some automated process. For example, there is no single optimization process in presently available software that produces multiple layers of single-bit-depth information similar in nature to these--and that they have separate colorings attached to them stretches credulity still further.
Another clear indictment is that some of those layers contain a block of content such as the registrar's date stamp that is logically discreet from a human perspective but not sufficiently discreet in terms of its physical properties related to coloring or shape or contrast as to be individually isolated onto its own layer by a software algorithm.
Also, it is impossible for the software product that had the final pass on this file (according to the metadata) to produce layering of its own at all, which clarifies beyond a doubt that the contents of the White House were touched by at least two separate pieces of software prior to being posted online.
The evidence thoroughly demonstrates that the document, while digital, was tampered with through human intervention.
If cynwoody or Dr. Conspiracy has evidence of how to get the kind of layering we see, particularly the multiple layers of separately colored single-bit-depth content from a normal scanning/optimization process let them demonstrate it or point us to someone who has.
Mara, if you're out there, thanks for your great work on this. I welcome any corrections to what I am saying here that you can offer.
Besides Mara's work, I encourage everyone to please also take the time to reference the other study released through Zullo's investigation on July 17. If we are to have any hope of conveying the truth of the forgery evidence, it will pay us to be astute on what elements are to be expected and on elements are anomalies that implicate human tampering.
P.S. Smokeyblue, I did not mean this content to be a direct response to something you said, I just didn't want to feed a potential troll by responding to it directly.