A system for determining a plurality of reflectance values for an item design representing a physical item having at least one area of interest on a surface of the physical item for containing critical data and a background feature positioned on the surface, the physical item suitable for positioning in a digital image recorder, the system comprising: an input module configured for receiving one or more material reflectance values of a substrate for providing said surface and design parameters for said background feature, the design parameters including a color and a color density of said background feature; a memory configured for storing a plurality of color reflectance values assigned to a corresponding plurality of selected combinations of specified design parameters; a look-up module configured for determining from the memory one or more color reflectance values having the specified design parameters matching the design parameters for said background feature; a combination module configured for combining the one or more material reflectance values with the corresponding one or more color reflectance values to produce resultant one or more design reflectance values representative of the reflectance of physical item when having the background feature positioned on said surface of the substrate; wherein the one or more design reflectance values of the item design are for use in determining whether the design parameters would produce the physical item having an acceptable digital image when processed by the digital image recorder.