[KarlInOhio]

Back when this first popped up I took an Obama birth certificate (it might have been the daily kos one), cranked up the image sharpening to maxiumum and the seal just barely showed up. How well the seal shows up depends on what the scanner's lighting is like. Those seals show up very well when the lighting comes in from the side, but a good scanner will shine light directly up on the paper to reduce the appearance of the paper's grain. That also reduces how visible impressed seals are.

[syc1959]

take a document that has a pattern on it, and scan it.
Then take the same document and apply something to emboss it. Scan it again and see if pattern breakage is apparent.

That is the point. There is NO pattern breakage and that is detectable.