H/t to Frank Arduini for finding this cool video showing how to get layers in a scanned image, without OCR and without any kind of tampering. This is similar to what I did in my article The Doc Got Layers, only it’s VIDEO and he showed the results in Illustrator to much greater effect.
This is an interesting piece about how other PDF documents on the White House website are divided into layers that are similar to the layers in the Obama LFBC:
http://www.thefogbow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=6292#p271515
Interesting indeed! It would be most useful to know the White House PDF workflow, and find another file that was created by the same person and hardware. Still yet, a very interesting observation of the highest order. That being, “D’oh! Why didn’t I think if that!”
You know what’s REALLY cool? Adobe Acrobat Pro, BY DEFAULT, will perform this same optimization process (MRC [Mixed Raster Content]) on ANY basically similar document that’s scanned DIRECTLY into Adobe Acrobat Pro (e.g. “Create .PDF | From Scanner”)! Just turn off the OCR (un-check ONE checkbox), accept ALL OTHER DEFAULTS, and voila! No need to run any other commands! Just save the .PDF, then open it in Illustrator and see the layers and other artifacts, right down to the same exact 24% and 48% scaling ratios!
The birthers will take that as the White House forging all their documents… ITS GOT LAYERS!!!