THE FORGE

A relation was traveling to the £sterling area (Norn Iron) for the day. I remembered I had some £ somewhere and fished it out. One of two £5 had Churchill on it. Now Bojo de Piffle has been practicing his Churchill pout over the last few days and it struck me to do a mash up with Bojo on the note.

So, first to scan the note with my excellent Epson scanner.

Epson Scanner Warning
Click on any image for a larger version

But, wow, this came up on my screen, so that was that.

Screen Grab

I then found an image online, took a screen grab, and loaded it into Photoshop.

Photoshop Warning

And, wow, I got this.

And this was a screen grab without any identifying information that it was a banknote.

So I went back to the Bank of England's Flickr account and downloaded the image from there via the conventional Flick download command.

Photoshop took the result without protest but it now had blue gridlines which I thought would stymie me. To my surprise they vanished when I saved down the file.

This is the final result. Not all that elegant but my grey, and other, cells were in a mush by this stage.

I was quite staggered at what appeared to be built into the scanner and Photoshop software.

I suppose, as someone who was once responsible for my administration's anti money laundering programme (not the same as forgery - I know), I should be thrilled at all this security.

I suspect, though, that it only deters some very low level forgers and that the big guys could get round it in the blink of an eye.

Anyway, I've now not only copied the note but defaced it - two crimes for the price of one.