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I have had a few FReepers ask me some good questions about the Obama COLB border, vis-a-vis, the one I demonstrate how to make.

I thought that the group should know them, too.

The first thing I said to them was, “If you are looking for logical reasons as to why the forger did what he did, there are none - beyond simply the desire to make a one-off that would surely piss off people like me.

Of all the initially wrong assumptions that I, and other “Sluethers,” made about Obama’s COLB, was to start off with “Ecclesiastes,” as in, “To everything, there is a reason.”

In the case of Obama’s COLB, we thought that every part of it had a reason for being there. Not true.

However, two facts stand out - and I did mention them in the video.

One, that the forger needed to obscure the security paper pattern that could be seen in a real border, and Two, the forger made the border semi-transparent because that is how the security paper pattern is seen below the border.

Back in mid-November 2008, I posted a real 2007 COLB border in which I had found the right mix of coloring, sharpening, and contrast to match that of Obama’s 2007 border.

However, to my chagrin, the alterations I made to the real 2007 border enhanced the security paper pattern that was still visible.

Why was that a problem?

If you enlarge the Obama COLB and look closely at its border, you can see the pattern of the security paper through it. You know that you are looking at security paper because the dark green patterns of the paper are not interrupted by the border.

They patterns run continuously across the face of the COLB, from the left edge of the paper to right edge and from top edge to the bottom edge - but are not perpendicular to the paper! (Chapter One, Part 4).

In other words, the borders on Obama’s COLB are semi-transparent while on the real 2007 COLB, they were close to being opaque.

One of the “security features” of the actual border used in 2007 (as well as in 2006 and 2009) is a very fine mesh through which the security paper can be seen.

It also can be seen on very high resolution scans and photographs - like that 2009 COLB I made - but not perfectly.

Normally, a scan or Xerox copy of a real COLB will cause that mesh to blur and obscure the background pattern of the security paper.

What made the Obama border such a bitch to replicate was the way in which it was repeatedly blurred and sharpened, and then made transparent enough to actually see the “security paper background” through it.

Keep in mind that Obama’s COLB (and my replicate) is a composite of four main layers: the first is an image of security paper; the second is the text layer including the certificate Masthead; the third is the border, and the fourth and last layer contains the “certification stamps” including the Seal, date-stamp, and Registrar’s stamp - which should be as visible as the date stamp, but is not even close (and why I left it off for now. Putting it on, though, is easier than doing the date stamp because the bottom of the border obscures most of it).

The reason for making the date-stamp so visible is to convey a sense of authenticity to the “document.”

Getting back to the problem, I realized that I had to make the border layer semi-transparent, WITHOUT changing the solid black information boxes at the top and bottom. Had they stayed a part of the border, they would have been incorrectly made to be semi-transparent.

Alas, I’m not done yet.

The other kicker about the Obama border is how did the forger keep the lettering in those black boxes sharp and nearly white in appearance.

My first thought was that he typed over an all-black rectangle with a white font. That was not right because in real borders, you can also see the security paper patterns through the text of the boxes like a stencil.

I decided that the text in those boxes were, in fact, transparent , but what initially threw me off the idea was clearing out the existing letters by highlighting them directly.

It made the openings in the letters too wide and too thick.

The solution was to expand the selection by a single pixel after inverting it.

That’s about all I’ll say about the border. I’m concentrating on finishing the book.

“If you are looking for logical reasons as to why the forger did what he did, there are none - beyond simply the desire to make a one-off that would surely piss off people like me.”

Ego much?
Have you apologized to Danae yet?

I am looking for logical reasons why you are still here and why on all your previous blog sites and forums, you have told everyone to check you out here as if you owned the place.
I am awaiting your response. If uou have no response other than what you said about not talking to trolls, I wull extrapolate that you have no reason.
I am not playing with you, Ron. Put up or shut up. Apologize to the people you used and the ones you hurt and withdraw. You will NOT make Free Republic part of your agenda and you will NOT use Free Republic to perpetrate yet another scam all over the net to embarrass us.
What you have done is completely on you. FR has nothing to do with it and I want that on the record.

Furthermore, anyone here who received those evil emails setting Danae up behind her back on polarik’s bogus say so, then sat back and let him rip her to shreds while you all had a shark feeding frenzy at her expense, should hang your heads in shame.
And if you let him revive what he so humbly called “Polarik’s army” that he could sic on anyone who disagreed with him, I question your judgement. BIG time.