Printed material verification

Apparatus and methods are provided. Print-mark data corresponding to a print mark (124) on a hardcopy of printed material (120) is extracted from data corresponding to the hardcopy of printed material (120). The print-mark data is analyzed to quantify printing artifacts of the print mark (124) resulting from printing variations occurring during printing of the hardcopy of printed material (120). The quantified printing artifacts are encrypted, and the encrypted printing artifacts are encoded into data corresponding to a machine-readable identifier (152). The machine-readable identifier (152) is printed from the data corresponding to the machine-readable identifier (152) on the hardcopy of printed material (120).