An image of the new U.S. $50 bill is available for previewing by banks and the public alike--and, thanks to technology built into Adobe software, fewer counterfeiters will succeed in duplicating them.

Last year, Adobe and several other software companies were criticized in the print production community for cooperating with the government and making it harder to scan and reproduce the bills digitally. This time around, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has made images of the bills, stamped “SPECIMEN” in red letters available for PDF download.

"There is no limit on the ways that people may use images of currency. What we don't want is people whipping currency out of their pockets and making copies," said Eugenie Foster, cash project leader in the Federal Reserve Board's division of reserve bank operations and payment systems in an AP story posted to the Web.

About one in 25,000 $50 bills are counterfeit, says the U.S. Federal Reserve, but of those that are counterfeit, 40% were reproduced digitally--up from 1% a decade ago. The agency redesigns bills every 7-10 years to thwart counterfeiters; a new $20 was released last year.