Abstract Marbling is a recurrent print defect that can be observed on polyvinyl(chloride) (PVC) film prints. It can be defined as undesired irregularity in print, which gives a texture to a solid area. Unlike mottling, marbling is a high frequency and quite regular defect, which can have many causes, whose identification and removal rely on accurate and reliable quantification of marbling on printed PVC substrates. Moreover, the evaluation of this defect must agree with human perception. The aim of this article is to evaluate the use of methods presented in the literature for mottle characterization on printed paper in order to quantify marbling on printed PVC film. Two methods, ISO standard and frequency analysis (based on Fourier transform), were used in this study to characterize a set of PVC printed substrates with increasing marbling. The resulting marbling indices were compared to visual print marbling assessment. The results demonstrated that methods applied to quantify mottle on paper can be transposed to evaluate marbling on printed PVC films.