1. A method for creating a validation template for determining if documents are valid or not, the method comprising: scanning a plurality of reference documents, the reference documents comprising examples of members of a class of documents for which validation is to be conducted to determine the conformity of a document to be validated to standards defining a genuine member of the class of documents, with a scanner to generate a digital image comprising an array of pixels, each pixel comprising image data relating to a single grid point of the image for each reference document; segmenting the digital image for each of the plurality of reference documents into a number of segments utilizing a processor; processing corresponding segments of each of the plurality of reference document images to determine one or more reference image segments, determination of the reference image segments including analysis of each pixel of each corresponding segment of the plurality of document images in order to develop a feature set representing each reference image segment; developing a numerical representation of the feature set representing each reference image segment; defining acceptance criteria for each reference segment indicating allowable deviation for a corresponding segment of a genuine document, the criteria being based on variations between feature sets among the corresponding image segments; processing the reference image segments to generate a reference template comprising the numerical representation of the feature set representing each reference image segment and the acceptance criteria for each reference image segment, generation of the reference template further comprising generating a set of rules governing the acceptance or rejection of a document as a whole based on which segments of the document meet or fail to meet the acceptance criteria for their corresponding reference image segments; and generating a validation template by optimizing the reference template by adjusting the number of segments to achieve a desired tradeoff between non-zero false negative and false positive acceptance rates.