What is disclosed is an image path for work flow or printing in which a scanner or image editor produces a raster image. The raster image is segmented into a background plus a plurality of objects represented as foreground, mask pairs (henceforth the background or a foreground, mask pair will be referred to as a field). Each field possesses a potentially different security level. Each security level corresponds to a public encryption key used to encrypt each layer with its corresponding security level. A publicly known file storage and transmission format that supports mixed raster content is used to store or transmit the raster image. Upon retrieval or reception, a viewer enters in a private key into a user interface. The private key can only decrypt that content to which the viewer is authorized.