That is indeed the conclusion that immediately leaps to mind: A few characters are different, and are antialiased, whereas most are not; therefore the antialiased ones have been tampered with.
However, if they were tampered with, then we have two possibilities:
1) They were tampered with after the layers were separated by the computer process. This is an obvious absurdity for reasons mentioned earlier: anyone doing such tampering would have had no reason to preserve the layers, and every possible reason for eliminating them and releasing a flat image that would not arouse suspicion of tampering.
2) They were tampered with before the layers were separated by the computer process; and in fact are the reason that these particular characters were pulled out when the scanning to pdf process converted a flat document into a layered one.
This is immediately much more satisfactory, but on further glance this theory begins to crumble, too.
First of all, let's look at which letters are antialiased. This is our tentative tamper list.
It includes: The final digit in the certificate number (1), the R in BARACK, 6c, N in Name, f in of, H and al in Hospital, I in Institution, If, h and al in hospital, add in address, L in Limits, 7 in 7a, d in Residence, d in and, S in State, Co in Country, o, in no,, gi in give, the X in a checked box, K in Kenya, ) in Country), S in STANLEY, , in Wichita,, K in Kansas, igna in Signature, of, nt in Parent, the check mark in a check box, a blur in a check box, of, and the A in Attendant.
We have therefore some 30 or so examples of letters that are antialiased. Why these particular letters?
With the sole exceptions of the d in Residence, the R in BARACK, the 1 in the birth certificate number, and the few items that occur in check boxes, they ALL have BOTH of the following characteristics in common:
a) They all occur either at the beginning or end of a word or set of characters OR in very close proximity to a non-text graphic element such as a signature, and
b) There is not the slightest possible reason why anybody would want to change them.
Note that the vast majority of these characters occur in the form itself. It would be very difficult (not to mention meaningless) to redo little letters on the beginnings and ends of words in the form.
In fact, out of the entire list, there is only a single one of the items which if changed could contribute anything meaningful to a forgery. I refer, of course, to the 1 in the certificate number.
Note also that this occurs at the end of a series of characters.
Notice also that one single stroke of the Registrar's signature is NOT antialiased, whereas every other bit of that signature is!
Please explain to me exactly why someone would go through the document and antialias these 30 or so characters, bearing in mind the difficulty of getting a good match on the little letters of the form itself -
...and ALSO bearing in mind that by this difficult method, they know that they are going to arouse suspicion of a forgery... when they could have much easier simply edited the document, made it look perfect, and released it as a flat-layer JPG.
You have also stated:
[The] reason letters and words were missing from the white layer is because [t]hey were parts of other words and data that were edited out and replaced.
Perhaps you can expand on what you mean by this. Having examined the graphic, I see no letters and words "missing from the white layer." Every single letter and every signature stroke has a white layer around it. There are, as far as I can tell, only two possible explanations for this.
1) the white outline was created by a software-driven process, or
2) the white outline was quite deliberately created as an anti-shadow by a human being.
Since 2) again makes absolutely no sense at all, we are back to the scan-to-pdf process as an explanation for this phenomenon as well.
In short: at the moment, I see no remotely reasonable way for your theory to be possible.
You seem to working under a false assumption here. Maybe I can clear that up. You said:
- - -
“However, if they were tampered with, then we have two possibilities:
1) They were tampered with after the layers were separated..
2) They were tampered with before the layers were separated by the computer process;”
- - -
They were neither. The layers were created during the editing process by Photoshop itself. That’s what Photoshop and most other high-powered graphics programs do. They allow you to organize you editing into separate layers or panes in real time so you can do things like bring them front to back in the image, or do away with a particular edit all together without affecting the editing in other layers/panes.
I think what you keep fishing for is for someone to tell you the exact process they used. That’s anyone’s guess. But, I can tell you how I (for the most part) did it with the fake example I posted earlier that is much cleaner than Obama’s. And, here is how I can imagine they did it:
What I’m proposing is they started out with a flat-scanned white-reversed negative image (black text on white background) of a microfilm/microfiche of someone’s Hawaii birth certificate of the day. (The Nordyke twins birth certificate in white is an excellent example of what they started out with.)
They loaded the graphic image into Photoshop, and began carefully erasing all the data they didn’t want with the eraser tool. Since it wasn’t Obama’s birth certificate, that meant erasing all or most everything in the typed data fields.
The author(s) then started another editing layer/pane to add data back to the image. Since they had to use typewritten characters from typewriters used in the 1961 era, this presented a problem. So, they chased down what they could of some old typewritten and printed documents of that day, scanned them, and began copying and pasting IMAGES of characters and words from the secondary documents into their editing layer/pane in Photoshop. Of course, when building words from IMAGES of typewritten characters, it’s easy to not get them perfectly aligned. And, they weren’t careful about what images they selected from secondary documents, because they accidentally selected some typeset proportional font text and kerned font text (possibly from a magazine of that era, or a later printed document) and included it in their primary editing layer. Typewriters in 1961 could not do proportional spacing. That didn’t happen until IBM released a special machine in 1966, and then the Selectric III in 1980. It is blatantly obvious that the inserted text images came from many sources, some modern, and not just one old 1961 typewriter.
Now, some of these character and word IMAGES they needed to copy weren’t clean, and had some unwanted artifacts. So, they had to omit them from the primary editing layer. And, they couldn’t come up with IMAGES they could copy to replace them, so they started another editing layer to create character images via computer generation that they could place into the main image to finish the words in the fields. These are the anti-aliased characters you see. This is where they also added the green background. (This is where I added mine in the example I built.)
They also started another editing layer/pane to add the certification stamp at the bottom of the document, and the two dates on rows 20 and 22. They saved the complete image from the FILE menu in Photoshop, and also exported it as a PDF file. The big mistake these rank amateurs made, was they didn’t “flatten” the image into one layer first.
Now, having put forth the theory above, it is all a moot point. I say again, the theory above is a moot point. Why? Because in August 1961, they did not have:
1) Typewriters that produced proportional spacing
2) Typewriters that produced kerned fonts
3) Computer word processing and publishing
4) Graphics editing software
5) computer disk/tape digital document storage
What you are seeing in the LFBC is a document that was created at a much later date, and from many sources. And, it is a somewhat careless job. This is the best I can do to explain what is there. I don’t know what else I can tell you.