Reversible Data Hiding Associated with Digital Halftoning That Allows Printing with Special Color Ink by Using Single Color Layer

TL;DR

This paper introduces a reversible data hiding method that embeds special color ink information into a standard image using digital halftoning and lossless compression, enabling compatible printing with special inks.

Contribution

It presents a novel framework combining digital halftoning and reversible data embedding to support printing with special color inks using a single image layer.

Findings

High-quality marked images achieved

Effective embedding of special color information

Compatibility with normal and special ink printing

Abstract

We propose an efficient framework of reversible data hiding to preserve compatibility between normal printing and printing with a special color ink by using a single common image. The special color layer is converted to a binary image by digital halftoning and losslessly compressed using JBIG2. Then, the compressed information of the binarized special color layer is reversibly embedded into the general color layer without significant distortion. Our experimental results show the availability of the proposed method in terms of the marked image quality.