Objective To propose an improved QR code-based digital holographic watermark. Methods This method used encrypted Fourier holography for QR-code encryption and hologram generation. In order to hide the watermark information, the hologram image was embedded into low frequency coefficients of the host image after 2-level wavelet decomposition of the L components in the standard color space. To improve the success rate of QR code decoding, the extracted watermark was processed by cross median filter. Conclusion Comparative experiments showed that QR code watermark had the ability to retain complete watermark information and had better robustness than ordinary watermark image. Compared to other similar algorithms, the proposed method had better robustness.