New color laser engraving tech from Toppan Security adds realism of skin tone

Technique tattoos ‘photo-realistic’ color portraits directly into document surface

Nov 6, 2025, 11:40 am EST | Joel R. McConvey

Toppan Security is calling its latest laser color printing product, Chroma, “the world’s first laser technology to deliver full-colour, photo-realistic, personalization for polycarbonate identity documents.”

According to a release, it aims to correct a longstanding imbalance in polycarbonate ID printing, which has struggled to find a satisfactory way to combine the security of laser engraving with color dyes, limiting the number of nations to adopt color portraits on ID.

“For three decades, governments issuing identity documents have been faced with a dilemma: they either had to prioritize the integrity of the picture or focus on the high resolution and quality of the portraits,” says Toppan. “Having both was impossible.”

Chroma solves this by combining the established process of laser engraving with lifelike color. The technology fuses photosensitive cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes with a single precision beam, achieving true polychromatic engraving directly into the polycarbonate structure.

Toppan believes the durable, tamper-proof result is a dramatic upgrade to standard black-and-white laser engraving on polycarbonate IDs.

“Chroma brings identity to life with unmatched realism and precision, delivering lifelike imagery on secure polycarbonate documents that exceed today’s security benchmarks,” says Jean-Pierre Ting, president of Toppan Security.

The company says color is an important element of human recognition and identity verification, which has been under-utilized because of technological barriers. Now, “at border control, officers see travellers in colour, while the person’s image, stored on the chip of a travel document, also appears in full colour on the officer’s screen. For optimal verification, the personalized portrait on the document must reflect the same color realism as both the person and the chip image.”

“Identity documents must do more than fraud prevention, they should preserve the truth of who we are,” says Frederic Jacquot, director and head of product for ID at Toppan. “Chroma provides the authenticity and assurance that governments and citizens require.”