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Freeper "PA Engineer" claimed here (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2307402/posts?page=1390#1390) that the Bomford document was photoshopped based on the following info:

Hold the Presses! My daughter just showed me something.

She had me open both the Australian and Kenyan documents in Photoshop Elements. From there she had me under the Image menu “Divide Scanned Photos”. Nothing appeared on the Kenyan document, however six layers pealed away from the Australian one.

These layers all showed distortion.

You can go on and read the rest of the post there.

But then freeper "rudman" countered here (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2307402/posts?page=1903#1903) with information that that tool in Photoshop does NOT detect layers, it separates out pictures.

“Divide Scanned Photos” is for separating out multiple pictures on a scanned document. It will find seemingly natural borders and break them out to minimize the time needed for scanning.

Now do this - take your phone bill, scan it in, and do the same exercise. See what i mean? Any flat document with seemingly blockish borders will break out.

All I am saying is that the work done earlier on the thread with the signatures and the creases are much more telling than this.

Just a last thought - if the australian certificate is really authenticate - or not - that really has no bearing on the kenyan certificate. If that can be corroborated - then there it is.

So the "layers" in Photoshop idea has been debunked.

What we are left is a close look at the document to see if the letters and numbers appear to be placed ON TOP OF the folds in the document, and whether the signature at the bottom is over or under the printed title.

I'm not persuaded by that, but others are.

Well I was persuaded by the rudman explanation but I decided to rethink that position - I might have been too hasty in doing so. While it is true that .jpg files do not preserve layers it is certainly true that they can preserve artifacts from layers that don't quite match up for some reason. So the Photoshop Elements processing could be OK.

For those who have Photoshop as opposed to Photoshop Elements you can run the experiment on the Bomford BC yourself via Photoshop's File menu (at least in CS4):

File/Automate/Crop & Straighten Photos

As a test, I used this method to process a recent scan I did of two documents: a sales receipt with many folds and wrinkles and a nice clean U.S. Postal Service Receipt.

What did I get:

Photoshop pulled out the U.S. Postal Service Receipt without a glich. Perfect.

The wrinkled and folded sales receipt came out in little pieces just like you get when you process the Bomford documents.

So based on that experiment I'm going to stick with rudman's view. I think the Photoshop Elements' or Photoshops division of the Bomford Document is just the sort of thing you get when you scan a .jpg with folds and wrinkles. Anyone doubting that should try the experiment themselves.