Enhancing Your Brand with Digimarc Barcode | Introduction

09 April 2021

Digimarc has developed a means for reliable, efficient identification of media based on Digimarc’s expertise in digital watermarking technology.

Introduction
Point-of-sale Scanners, Mobile Devices, and Color
Designing for Digimarc Barcode for Packaging
Testing and Evaluating Enhancement

Introduction

Digimarc has developed a means for reliable, efficient identification of media based on Digimarc’s expertise in digital watermarking technology. The result is known as Digimarc Barcode. Digimarc Barcodes enable the imperceptible incorporation of information into digital media of all types: music, photographs,

packages, posters, movies, etc. The average person neither sees nor hears any indication of the presence of this information, but it is there nonetheless. And it can be read and acted on by enabled scanning and listening devices such as point-of-sale (POS) scanners and mobile phones.

Digimarc Barcode for packaging is distinguished from Digimarc Barcode for other categories of media in that it carries a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN). The GTIN supports encoding UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-8 and EAN-13 barcodes that meet the GS1 standard. The GTIN is required to support retail point-of-sale systems as well as production and supply-chain systems that rely on the GTIN.

Digimarc Barcode technology was originally developed for use in process color (CMYK) images, where it has a long, well-established history. More recently, the technology is being applied to packaging, where the common use of spot colors poses different challenges and requires new solutions.

This document focuses on the overall process of applying Digimarc Barcodes to package designs, educating you about how ink coverage, printing technology, and other factors related to integrating Digimarc Barcodes into your package designs. After reading this document, you will understand how to evaluate existing designs and create new designs for optimal results with Digimarc Barcode for packaging.

Digimarc Barcode Technology: An Overview

Digimarc Barcode technology enhances a package’s design artwork by subtly modulating specific properties of individual pixels in the artwork to add a unique, imperceptible identifier to the package — the Digimarc Barcode. Modulation is stronger for some pixels and weaker for others so that the effects are balanced over the whole design. The overall strength of modulation determines two important properties of Digimarc Barcodes:

• Readability: the capacity of a Digimarc Barcode to be detected by scanning devices
• Perceptibility: the capacity of a Digimarc Barcode to be seen by human viewers

The figure below, Balancing Readability and Perceptibility, illustrates how the strength of enhancement affects both the readability and perceptibility of the Digimarc Barcode. As the strength of enhancement increases, the readability of the Digimarc Barcode increases. However, the perceptibility of the Digimarc Barcode also increases as the strength of enhancement increases.

While it is clearly desirable to increase readability, it is likewise undesirable to increase perceptibility. Thus the goal in enhancement is to find the sweet spot — the strength level at which the Digimarc Barcode is readable but remains effectively imperceptible:

The Digimarc Barcode applied to a package carries that package’s single unique GTIN value, the same value carried by the package’s traditional 1D barcode. Unlike the 1D barcode, which is visible and appears on a package only once (in most cases), the Digimarc Barcode is replicated throughout the package’s artwork. The result is an enhanced package that has numerous instances or copies of the unique Digimarc Barcode replicated Imperceptibly across its surface.

It is the replication of a Digimarc Barcode that provides the singular benefit of being able to scan a package at any angle and detect the Digimarc Barcode. It is also this replication that poses the challenge of applying a Digimarc Barcode effectively in the diverse art elements of a package’s design.

NOTE: Digimarc Barcodes are not literally invisible but are sufficiently imperceptible so as to be essentially invisible to the average person. The expert eyes of graphics professionals may be able, on very close scrutiny, to discern the subtle effects of enhancing a package with a Digimarc Barcode.