Interesting little tidbit about the certificate you can download direct from the White House web site.

When you take a document like a "birth certificate" or any document for that matter and scan it (like I assume they did to distribute the copy in digital format) it's a gif, tiff, jpeg, png, etc format. The document the White House put out for distribution is in a pdf file.

Many companies exchange graphics in this format (pdf). It's very common.

However, if you are familiar with graphics and design (my sister in-law is a graphic designer) you can extract the original image file from the pdf file then load it into your desired image program like Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.

When you load "this" file into Illustrator the original graphic has all kinds of layers in it. You use layers to manipulate, change and design graphics and documents.

The original document has all kinds of embedded layers in it. My syster-in-law did just that and sure enough, full of layers. Scanned images like raw jpeg, bmp, etc don't have layers, they are added after the fact.

How many of you ever took a photograph or a document, scanned it an emailed it to a friend or family member? No layers.

Food for thought.