The present invention relates to digitally watermarking spot colors. Spot colors are represented as digital files including a set of intensity values. These intensity values correspond to the amount or percentage of spot color ink that should be applied to a pixel, a group of pixel or to an image area. A watermark signal component including luminance value adjustments is converted to intensity value adjustments. These intensity value adjustments are applied to the spot color digital file to facilitated digital watermark embedding. In another embodiment, an adjustment is made to the intensity values to compensate for noise introduced by a scanner, camera or color conversion.