1. A method for the qualitative evaluation of material with at least one identification characteristic, wherein at least one background reference value and at least one mask reference ( 06, 13 ) are stored in the evaluation device, wherein the background threshold value represents the properties of the material to be inspected in at least a part of a surrounding area, which extends around the identification characteristic, and wherein the mask reference ( 06, 13 ) represents the geometric outline of the identification characteristic and/or the relative arrangement of several identification characteristics in respect to each other, in the course of the inspection of the imprinted material difference image ( 01, 16 ), at least for the area of expectation ( 02 ) is formed from the actual image data and the background reference value, the actual position of the identification characteristics is derived from the comparison of the difference image ( 01, 16 ) with the mask reference ( 06, 13 ) in the evaluation device.