Digital Watermarking

First A. Author, Second B. Author, Jr., and Third C. Author, Member, IEEE
Abstract In this paper, a new embedding
strategy
for
DWT-based
watermarking
is
proposed.
Different
from
the
existing
watermarking schemes in which low frequency
coefficients
are
explicitly
excluded
from
watermark
embedding,
we
claim
that
watermarks should be embedded in the low
frequency subband firstly, and the remains
should be embedded in high frequency subbands
according to the significance of subbands. We
also claim that different embedding formula
should be applied on the low frequency subband
and high frequency subbands respectively.
Applying this strategy, an adaptive algorithm
incorporating the feature of visual masking of
human vision system into watermarking is
proposed. In the algorithm, a novel method to
classify wavelet blocks is presented. The
experimental results demonstrate that the
watermarks generated with the proposed
algorithm are invisible and robust against noise
and
commonly
used
image
processing
techniques.
Keywords Image Watermarking, Robust, Copyright
Protection, Security

produce the watermarked image. The watermark, however,

was not robust to additive noise. Cox et al. [2] noted that in
order for a watermark to be robust to attack, it must be placed
in perceptually significant areas of the image. Their method
was robust to image scaling, JPEG coding, dithering,
cropping, and rescanning. Xia, Boncelet, and Arce [5]
proposed a watermarking scheme based on the Discrete
Wavelet Transform (DWT). We have used DWT and
watermark, modeled as Gaussian noise, was added to the low
frequency bands of the image.
ALGORITHM USED
1.The wavelet transform on the input image is performed
.Only one level of decomposition is performed to get four
subbands i.e.LL,HH,HL,LH .
2.The key, which is nothing but the image to be embedded, is
taken, the key is multiplied with the weighting function and it
is then added to the subband information of the original
image.
3.The inverse wavelet transform is then taken to get the
watermarked image.
4.In order to retrieve the key, the forward wavelet transform
of the watermarked image is taken and it is substracted from
the wavelet coefficients of the original image to retrieve the
key image.
5.The mean square error between the original image and
watermarked image is also calculated and displayed in the
command window.

INTRODUCTION
We are living in the era of information where billions of bits
of data is created in every fraction of a second and with the
advent of internet, creation and delivery of digital data has
grown many fold. Since copying a digital data is very easy
and fast too so, issues like, protection of rights of the content
and proving ownership, arises. Digital watermarking came as
a technique and a tool to overcome shortcomings of current
copyright laws for digital data. The specialty of watermark is
that it remains intact to the cover work even if it is copied. So
to prove ownership or copyrights of data watermark is
extracted and tested. It is very difficult for counterfeiters to
remove or alter watermark. As such the real owner
can always have his data safe and secure. Counterfeiters try to
degrade the quality of watermarked image by attacking an
image (generally attacks are median and Gaussian filter,
scaling, compression and rotation of watermarked image).By
attacking watermarked image it become very difficult to
recover watermark back from the watermarked image and
even if it extracted one may no longer use it to prove the
ownership and copyrights.
Many watermarking methods have been proposed. Schyndel,
Tirkel, and Osborne [1] generated a watermark using a msequence generator. The watermark was either embedded or
added to the least significant bit of the original image to

CONCLUSION
In the method employed for digital watermarking of images,
the copyright inserted is invisible to others. The authenticity
of the images can be easily achieved. Here, at very first, the
colour image is taken, then converting it into grayscale
image. The DWT based watermarking algorithm is applied
between two images. The watermarked image is obtained
where the authentic images is invisible to outside world. Also,
the original content is also not modified relatively. The error
performance metrics also calculated which varies according
to the weighting function values. The mean square error

between original image and watermarked was 0.0575. The

robust watermarking algorithm has been thus implemented.
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