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In January 2014, Digimarc announced Digimarc® Barcode for the packaging industry to improve the check-out efficiency and customer experience for retailers. Digimarc Barcode is a machine readable code that carries the same information as a traditional Universal Product Code (UPC) and is introduced by adding a robust digital watermark to the package design. It is imperceptible to the human eye but can be read by a modern barcode scanner at the Point of Sale (POS) station. Compared to a traditional linear barcode, Digimarc Barcode covers the whole package with minimal impact on the graphic design. This significantly improves the Items per Minute (IPM) metric, which retailers use to track the checkout efficiency since it closely relates to their profitability. Increasing IPM by a few percent could lead to potential savings of millions of dollars for retailers, giving them a strong incentive to add the Digimarc Barcode to their packages. Testing performed by Digimarc showed increases in IPM of at least 33% using the Digimarc Barcode, compared to using a traditional barcode. A method of watermarking print ready image data used in the commercial packaging industry is described. A significant proportion of packages are printed using spot colors, therefore spot colors needs to be supported by an embedder for Digimarc Barcode. Digimarc Barcode supports the PANTONE spot color system, which is commonly used in the packaging industry. The Digimarc Barcode embedder allows a user to insert the UPC code in an image while minimizing perceptibility to the Human Visual System (HVS). The Digimarc Barcode is inserted in the printing ink domain, using an Adobe Photoshop plug-in as the last step before printing. Since Photoshop is an industry standard widely used by pre-press shops in the packaging industry, a Digimarc Barcode can be easily inserted and proofed.

Color measurement and control of printing has been an important issue in computer vision technology . In the past, people have used density meter and spectrophotometer to measure the color of printing product. For the color management of 4 color press, by these kind meters, people can measure the color data from color bar printed at the side of sheet, then do ink key presetting. This way have wide application in printing field. However, it can not be used in the case that is to measure the color of spot color printing and printing pattern directly. With the development of multispectral image acquisition, it makes possible to measure the color of printing pattern in any area of the pattern by CCD camera than can acquire the whole image of sheet in high resolution. This essay give a way to measure the color of printing by multispectral camera in the process of printing. A 12 channel spectral camera with high intensity white LED illumination that have driven by a motor, scans the printing sheet. Then we can get the image, this image can include color and printing quality information of each pixel, LAB value and CMYK value of each pixel can be got by reconstructing the reflectance spectra of printing image. By this data processing, we can measure the color of spot color printing and control it. Through the spot test in the printing plant, the results show this way can get not only the color bar density value but also ROI color value. By the value, we can do ink key presetting, that makes it true to control the spot color automatically in high precision.

To watermark spot color packaging images one modulates available spot color inks to create a watermark signal. By perturbing different combinations of inks one can change the color direction of the watermark signal. In this paper we describe how to calculate the optimal color direction that embeds the maximum signal while keeping the visibility below some specified acceptable value. The optimal color direction depends on the starting color for the image region, the ink density constraints and the definition of the watermark signal. After a description of the general problem of N spot color inks we shall describe two-ink embedding methods and try to find the optimal direction that will maximize robustness at a given visibility. The optimal color direction is usually in a chrominance direction and the resulting ink perturbations change the luminosity very little. We compare the optimal color embedder to a single-color embedder.

Most packaging is printed using spot colors to reduce cost, produce consistent colors, and achieve a wide color gamut on the package. Most watermarking techniques are designed to embed a watermark in cyan, magenta, yellow, and black for printed images or red, green, and blue for displayed digital images. Our method addresses the problem of watermarking spot color images. An image containing two or more spot colors is embedded with a watermark in two of the colors with the maximum signal strength within a user-selectable visibility constraint. The user can embed the maximum watermark signal while meeting the required visibility constraint. The method has been applied to the case of two spot colors and images have been produced that are more than twice as robust to Gaussian noise as a single color image embedded with a luminance-only watermark with the same visibility constraint.

Today's color imaging systems are powerful and complex entities that enable users to replicate lifelike colors. However when a color issue arises, it is very difficult to diagnose and solve. Therefore, it is beneficial to complement a color imaging system with sophisticated and user-friendly tools that help users to self-solve color issues. This paper discusses the assessment of a color printing workflow (CPW) for personal computers and the development of a web-based self-service customer support tool for color printing issues that may arise with electrophotographic color printers. We study the stages in the CPW where the colors of a document may change. From this evaluation, we find the system configuration that may have caused the change. This study provides the foundation for the development of our web-based tool, named the Color Printing Workflow Troubleshooting (CPWT) Tool. This comprehensive assessment of the CPW helps us to determine a troubleshooting strategy for our web-based tool. The set of color issues considered are those that arise when one attempts to reproduce a Pantone spot color.

Watermarking of printed materials has usually focused on process inks of cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK). In packaging, almost three out of four printed materials include spot colors. Spot colors are special premixed inks, which can be produced in a vibrant range of colors, often outside the CMYK color gamut. In embedding a watermark into printed material, a common approach is to modify the luminance value of each pixel in the image. In the case of process color work pieces, the luminance change can be scaled to the C, M, Y and K channels using a weighting function, to produce the desired change in luminance. In the case of spot color art designs, there is only one channel available and the luminance change is applied to this channel. In this paper we develop a weighting function to embed the watermark signal across the range of different spot colors. This weighting function normalizes visibility effect and signal robustness across a wide range of different spot colors. It normalizes the signal robustness level over the range of an individual spot color’s intensity levels. Further, it takes into account the sensitivity of the capturing device to the different spot colors.

Color laser printers are beginning to emerge in various configurations from several vendors. Colorocs offer a 300 DPE, PostScript compatible device. It is a dedicated printer based on the same single pass to paper technology used in its full color copier. The double belt system provides color and black and white bilevel printing up to five and forty pages per minute, respectively. Popular applications packages are moving to support color output devices with the speed and flexibility of laser printers. Color laser printers are finding their way into environments not satisfied by the competing technologies of thermal transfer, dye diffusion and ink jet. Proofing, spot color and business presentations are the leading areas requesting the price performance capabilities of color laser printing. Throughout, plain paper, image quality and cost per page are the critical criteria for the growth of color laser printing.© (1991) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.