Using watermark visibility measurements to select an optimized pair of spot colors for use in a binary watermark

Abstract

Spot colors are widely used in the food packaging industry. We wish to add a watermark signal within a spot color that is readable by a Point Of Sale (POS) barcode scanner which typically has red illumination. Some spot colors such as blue, black and green reflect very little red light and are difficult to modulate with a watermark at low visibility to a human observer. The visibility measurements that have been made with the Digimarc watermark enables the selection of a complementary color to the base color which can be detected by a POS barcode scanner but is imperceptible at normal viewing distance