device , method , and system for recording diffractive high resolution text , pictorial , and / or other graphical information is provided which is particularly suited to recording information that would be difficult to reproduce by typical counterfeiting methods . the information recorded may be used to authenticate the recorded item , or indirectly , an item to which the recording is attached . such items may include legal , financial and commercial instruments , credit cards , and packaging for such items as software , art , and other items where forgery of the item may be a concern . in one embodiment of the invention light is selectively passed by a shutter , and a spatial filter then cleans the beam to remove undesirable frequency components . a liquid crystal display dynamically receives a data stream from a computer where each of the displayed data values presents an optical characteristic to the filtered beam and causes diffraction into a plurality of diffracted beams , the character of which is dependent on the data displayed . a mask selectively passes only predetermined ones of the beams so that only frequency components that will generate the desired optical interference fringes are allowed to pass . additional optical components receive the passed beams and redirect them to overlap at an output plane to form interference fringes . these interference fringes can have a very high spatial frequency so that extremely fine lines or small objects , including text and graphics , can be recorded .