It can be either. If you start with a scanned document, the OCR program guesses at the content and creates blocks of text using the closest match. This will lead to numerous layers, often with mismatched fonts. Acrobat attempts to maintain the visual representation first and doesn’t necessarily create readable or contiguous text. Suspect characters and graphics are left as images so more complex documents create more layers and problems.
Ultimately, any OCR document is inherently unreliable as a record. A photograph would show signs of manipulation, but the OCR process adds artifacts that make it almost impossible to prove either way.
The whole point is to make a scanned image more easily readable on a computer screen and to compress the file. Layers don’t change the data.
A hypothesized workflow for the Obama Long Form Birth Certificate Image was that the birth certificate PDF was created by scanning one of the two hard copy/paper documents brought back from Hawaii on a Xerox WorkCentre that has firmware which compresses a bitmap raw scan into a compressed PDF file. It was then opened and saved on a MAC using the PDF viewer module in the Mac OS and inverted 180 degrees because the original hard copy was placed in the WorkCenter’s paper feeder or platen upside down.
1. A copy of the long form brought back from Hawaii was inserted upside down into a Xerox 7655 or equivalent Workcentre and then someone emailed the document.
2. The email was opened up the document on a Mac and a staff member realized the mistake and printed to PDF after rotating the picture.
Step 2. removes all the metadata, but explains the orientation of the rotated embedded pictures. Step 2 also removes the JBIG2 compression. Step 1 explains the multiple monochrome bitmap layers as well as the repetition of identical characters because of JBIG2 compression
3. When saved as a PDF in Preview, after the 180 degree rotation, the relevant metadata identifying the Xerox Workcentre disappears but various tell-tale signs remained. None of those steps changes the data.
If anyone would like to inspect the original, long form birth certificate for Obama that currently resides in the office safe of the Hawaii Registrar of Vital Statistics, Hawaii law allows that by court order but a congressional subpoena for the document would work as well since Congressional subpoenas have the legal force of court orders.
Copies of the Obama birth certificate were submitted to Georgia Administrative Law Judge Michael Mahili in the Georgia Obama eligibility challenge, to U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate in the Mississippi Obama eligibility challenge and to the nine members of the Alabama Supreme Court in an Amicus Brief submitted by the Alabama Democratic Party in the Obama Alabama eligibility challenge.
Yes I was noticing how it looked rougher in illustrator than it did in Photoshop, the letters I mean. But that signature of Ann Dunham Obama looked very suspicious to me even in Photoshop as if the “unham Obama” was separate and was written on a computer tablet.