the disclosure describes a method of progressively decoding a digital watermark on a distributed computing platform . a client device equipped with a digital camera , such as a pda or cell phone , captures a digital image of a watermarked object , and pre - filters the image to isolate a portion of the image data suspected of containing a digital watermark . the pre - filter de - correlates a portion of the image data suspected of containing a digital watermark from the remaining host image signal using a predictive filter . the client then quantizes the filtered data and progressively transmits the quantized data to a watermark decoder . the progressive transmitter sends image data as necessary to achieve a valid decoding operation . to reduce bandwidth requirements , the transmitter starts with the most highly quantized version of the filtered image , and sends lesser quantized versions until the watermark decoder completes a successful decoding operation .