A Novel Invisible Color Image Watermarking Scheme Using Image Adaptive Watermark Creation and Robust Insertion-Extraction

Abstract

In this paper we present a robust and novel strategic invisible approach for insertion-extraction of a digital watermark, a color image, into color images. The novelty of our scheme lies in determining a perceptually important sub-image in the host image so that slight tampering of the sub-image will affect the aesthetic of the host image significantly. This eliminates the possibility of watermark removal, which in turn makes the watermark secure and robust. The other novel feature of our algorithm is the creation of a compound watermark image, called effective watermark, using the input user watermark (logo) and attributes of host image, which facilitates robust insertion-extraction processes. The effective watermark creation consists of two distinct phases: in the first phase, a statistical image is synthesized from a perceptually important sub-image of the host image and in the second phase, a compound image is created by fusing the input logo and synthetic statistical image. Results of exhaustive experimentation using standard benchmarks demonstrates the robustness and efficacy of our approach