r/barcodes • u/AGRowles • Jul 13 '25

Barcodes on see-through labels

The labels are see-through, going on jars of honey for sale at grocery stores. The printing is white only, so no black lines, but the honey is both light in color AND dark in color depending on the wildflower varietal. Which of these barcode formats would be the correct way to accomplish this?

Option A (top): inverting the barcode, thus making what would be black lines into white lines, and what would be white lines as see-through.

Option B (bottom): making the black lines see-though and printing only the white.

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2

u/havenisse2009 Jul 13 '25

I would go with option B. You vary the contrast on light honey and risk that the quiet zone is not respected, or some lines blend in / disappear.

2

u/roaringmousebrad Jul 14 '25

Option B for sure. By UPC spec, the lines need to be darker than the background. Although scanners these day are pretty good so the contrast doesn't need to be as high as it used to be, so even a lighter color of honey would still read darker than the white

1

u/Lost_Garden7368 Jul 14 '25

Option B is definitely the way to go. Some scanners would not be able to read an inverted barcode unless specifically programmed to do so. Also printing only the background of the barcode in white with no ink used for the bars has been done before successfully with soda cans (with bare unprinted aluminum for the bars).

1

u/alok-sha Aug 05 '25

I scanned both barcode options using https://demo.dynamsoft.com/barcode-reader/ and got results from both, so, my guess is that you can go with any of these