Jillian Steinhauer, writing for HyperAllergic:
You may recall that last month, when actor Leonard Nimoy died, Canadians went into a frenzy “spocking” their $5 bills — aka drawing on the banknotes in order to turn former Canadian prime minister Wilfrid Laurier into Spock. When I was editing our story about the phenomenon, I discovered something curious: you can’t Photoshop money.
Fascinating.
Microsoft Paint to the rescue?
I know several years ago if you tried copying bills on a Canon color laser copier, it wouldn’t allow it. You’d just get a black rectangle the size of the bill you were trying to copy. We tried it when the technicians were installing the new copier and they were telling us funny stories about things that folks had tried with their copiers.
There’s a special pattern of circles printed on a lot of different currencies, called the EURion Constellation. It sort of looks like the constellation of Orion. Take a close look at a $20 bill – the 0s in the tiny orange 20s printed on it are the circle pattern. This is one of the things that copiers, scanners, and Photoshop look for.
Use Photoshop 7 and an older scanner if you really want to edit currency in Photoshop.
I can’t recall what business grade copier it was, but if you tried color copying US bills, it would fully lock up the machine and a rep from the Treasury Dept would need to unlock it. Coulda been an apocryphal story, but was conveyed as truth.