Improved Content Based Image Watermarking

TL;DR

This paper introduces a robust, transparent image watermarking scheme that leverages human visual system sensitivity and local image features to embed watermarks imperceptibly, enhancing robustness and transparency.

Contribution

It proposes a novel watermarking method that uses a visual mask based on frequency and spatial features to improve imperceptibility and robustness of watermarks.

Findings

Watermark remains imperceptible to human eye.

The scheme is robust against common image distortions.

Watermark embedding adapts to local image characteristics.

Abstract

This paper presents a robust and transparent scheme of watermarking that exploits the human visual systems' sensitivity to frequency, along with local image characteristics obtained from the spatial domain. The underlying idea is generating a visual mask based on the visual systems' perception of image content. This mask is used to embed a decimal sequence while keeping its amplitude below the distortion sensitivity of the image pixel. We consider texture, luminance, corner and the edge information in the image to generate a mask that makes the addition of the watermark imperceptible to the human eye.