The appearance of a conventional 2D barcode pattern is often too obtrusive for integrating into an aesthetically designed advertisement. This is because of the fact that they didn’t provide perceptual quality and decoding robustness of the encoded images. Besides, no human readable information is provided before the barcode is successfully decoded. There proposes a new picture-embedding 2D barcode, called PiCode, which mitigates these two limitations by equipping a scannable 2D barcode with a picturesque appearance. PiCode is designed with careful considerations on both the perceptual quality of the embedded image and the decoding robustness of the encoded message. Comparisons with existing beautified 2D barcodes show that PiCode achieves one of the best perceptual quality for the embedded image, and maintains a better trade-off between image quality and decoding robustness in various application conditions. The generation of PiCode thus enhances the customers to scan the code using their mobile phones inorder to retrieve the data that carries behind them.