Title
Watermarking spot colors in packaging
Abstract
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.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1117/12.2083134
Proceedings of SPIE
Keywords
Field
DocType
packaging,digital watermarking,visual system,graphic design
Universal Product Code,Digital watermarking,Computer graphics (images),Inkwell,Human visual system model,Computer science,Point of sale,Graphic design,Barcode,Spot color,Database
Conference
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
9409
0277-786X
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
1
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
alastair m reed101.01
Tomás Filler282836.18
Kristyn Falkenstern302.03
Yang Bai46824.51