International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 7, July 2012)

454

Digital Watermarking Technique for Authentication of
Color Image

1
Prof.P.B.Khatkale, Lect in K.B.P.Polytechnic,Kopargaon,

2
.Prof. K.P.Jadhav, Lect in K.B.P.Polytechnic,Kopargaon,

3.
Prof. M.V.Khasne,Lect in K.B.P.Polytechnic,Kopargaon

1
praveenkhatkale@gmail.com
2
kishor268@gmail.com


Abstract: Digital watermarking methods describe the
technologies that allow hiding of information in digital media,
such as images, video and audio. Watermarking techniques
embed information in images by introducing changes that are
imperceptible to the human eye but recoverable by a computer
program. Generally, the watermark is a code to identify the
owner of the image. The locations in which the watermark is
embedded are determined by a secret key. Doing so prevents
possible pirates from easily removing the watermark.
Furthermore it should be possible to recover the watermark
from an altered image. Possible alterations of watermarked
images include compression, filtering and cropping. These
alterations are referred to as attacks. The first watermarking
application that might come to mind is related to copyright
protection of digital media Watermarking algorithms have been
proposed to protect varieties of content, such as official
documents.

Keywords: Cropping, Digital Watermark, Embedding,
Extraction, Secret key.

I. INTRODUCTION
A watermarking system must allow for a useful
amount of information to be embedded into the image.
Digital watermarking is the process of embedding
information into digital multimedia content such that the
information (which we call the watermark) can later be
extracted or detected for a variety of purposes including copy
prevention and control. Digital watermarking has become an
active and important area of research, and development and
commercialization of watermarking techniques is being
deemed essential to help address some of the challenges
faced by the rapid proliferation of digital content.
The process of digital watermarking involves the
modification of the original multimedia data to embed a
watermark containing key information such as authentication
or copyright codes. The embedding method must leave the
original data perceptually unchanged. The major technical
challenge is to design a highly robust digital watermarking
technique, which discourages copyright infringement by
making the process of watermarking removal tedious and
costly. A watermarking algorithm consists of the watermark
structure, an embedding algorithm, and an extraction, or a
detection algorithm. In multimedia applications, embedded
watermarks should be invisible, robust, and have a high
capacity. Invisibility refers to the degree of distortion
introduced by the watermark. The literature survey explain
robustness is the resistance of an embedded watermark
against intentional attacks such as noise. Capacity is the
amount of data that can be represented by an embedded
watermark.
Digital watermarking is a technology for embedding
various types of information in digital content. In general,
information for protecting copyrights and proving the
validity of data is embedded as a watermark. A digital
watermark is a digital signal or pattern inserted into digital
content. The digital content could be a still image, an audio
clip, a video clip, a text document, or some form of digital
data that the creator or owner would like to protect. The main
purpose of the watermark is to identify who the owner of the
digital data is, but it can also identify the intended recipient.

II. BLOCK DIAGRAM (DWM)

Fig 1. Basic block diagram

International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 7, July 2012)
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Digital watermarking is one of the proposed
solutions for copyright protection of multimedia data. This
technique is better than Digital Signatures and other methods
because it does not increase overhead. In this paper plan to
present a new image watermarking technique that can embed
more number of watermark bits in the cover image without
affecting the imperceptibility and increase the security of
watermarks .Digital watermarking is the process of
embedding information into a digital signal in a way that is
difficult to remove. The signal may be audio, pictures or
video. In this paper image is the host signal and embedding
the secret data and the extract the same. In this process
enhancing the network security.
2.1 Embedding stage:-
One of the most important features that make the
recognition of images possible by humans is color. Color is a
property that depends on the reflection of light to the eye and
the processing of that information in the brain. The color is
used every day to tell the difference between objects, places,
and the time of day. Usually colors are defined in three
dimensional color spaces usually colors are defined in three
dimensional color spaces. These could be RGB (Red, Green,
and Blue), HSV (Hue, Saturation, and Value) or HSB (Hue,
Saturation, and Brightness). The last two are dependent on
the human perception of hue, saturation, and brightness [6].
Color represents the distribution of colors within the entire
image. This distribution includes the amounts of each color,
but not the locations of colors.

Fig 2. Embedding stage
2.2 Extracting stage:-
In a digital watermarking scheme, it is not
convenient to carry the original image all the time in order to
detect the owner's signature from the watermarked image.
Moreover, for those applications that require different
watermarks for different copies, it is preferred to utilize some
kind of watermark-independent algorithm for extraction
process i.e. dewaters marking. Its robustness against many
attacks including rotation, low pass filtering, salt n paper
noise addition and compression.

Fig 3. Extracting Stage

III. PROPERTIES
For better activeness, watermark should be
acperceptually invisible within host media, statistically
invisible to unauthorized removal, readily extracted by owner
of image, robust to accidental and intended signal distortion
like filtering, compression, re-sampling, retouching, crapping
etc. For a digital watermark to be effective for ownership, it
must be robust, recoverable from a document, should provide
the original information embedded reliably and also removed
by authorized users
3.1.1 Robustness:
The watermark should be robust such that it must be
difficult to remove. The watermark should be robust to
different attacks. The robustness describes whether
watermark can be reliably detected after performing some
media operations.
3.1.2 Perceptual transparency:
This property describes that whether watermark is
visible or invisible to human sensor organ. Perceptible
watermarks are visible to human while imperceptible are not.
Imperceptible watermarks are such that content remains same
after applying digital watermarking technique.

3.1.3 Security:
Security property describes that how easy to remove
a watermark. This is generally referred to as attack on
watermarking. Attack refers to detection or modification of
watermark.

3.1.4 Complexity:
This is important property which is to be consider in
real-time applications like video. Complexity property is
concerned with amount of effort needed to extract or retrieve
the watermark from content.


International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 7, July 2012)
456

3.1.5 Capacity:
Capacity property of digital watermarks refers to
amount of information that can be embedded within the
content. The important point is that more data is used in
watermark, watermark will become less robust. In addition to
these properties, watermarks are having some extra
properties as unambiguity, tamper resistance, inseparable
from the works and able to undergo some transformation as
works.
IV.CLASSIFICATION
Digital watermarks are classified according to their
applications. The watermarks are classified as perceptible
watermarks and imperceptible watermarks, robust and
fragile, public and private. This classification of watermarks
is broadly described in following sections.
4.1 Perceptible watermarks and imperceptible watermarks:
Perceptible watermarks are visible to human eye while
imperceptible watermarks are invisible. The perceptible
watermarks are useful for primary application i.e. for
statement ownership or authorship. So for this reason it
should be visible. .On the other hand imperceptible
watermarks are useful for complex applications such as
document identification in which content being watermarked
must appear in unchanged form Examples of visible
(perceptible) watermarks are logos on TV, IBM watermark
and that of invisible (imperceptible) watermarks are ATT,
NEC/MIT, UU etc. Perceptible watermarks i.e. visible one
are extension of the concept of logos. They are applicable to
images only. These watermarks are embedded into image.
They are applicable in maps, graphics and software user
interface. Imperceptible watermarks i.e. invisible one
remains hidden in the content. They can be detected only by
authorized agency. These watermarks are useful for content
or author authentication and for detecting unauthorized
copier.
4.2 Robust watermarks and fragile watermarks:
Robust or fragile is nothing but degree to which
watermarks can withstand any modifications of any types
caused due to the transmission or loss compression.
Perceptible watermarks are more robust in nature than
imperceptible one. But meaning of this is not that
imperceptible watermarks are fragile one. Robust watermarks
are those watermarks which are difficult to remove from the
object in which they are embedded. Fragile watermarks are
those watermarks which can be easily destroyed by any
attempt to tamper with them. Fragile watermarks are
destroyed by data manipulation.

4.3 Private watermarks and public watermarks:
Private watermarks requires at least original data to
recover watermark information Public watermarks requires
neither original data nor embedded watermarks to recover
watermark information. Private watermarks are also known
as secure watermarks. To read or retrieve private watermark,
it is necessary to have secret key. Public watermark can be
read or retrieve by anyone using specialized algorithm. In
this sense public watermarks are not secure. Public
watermarks are useful for carrying IPR information. They are
good alternatives to labels.
V. HIGH CAPACITY WATERMARKING ALGORITHM

In this approach, a block DCT-based algorithm is
developed to embed the binary watermark into the colour
host image. Since small high frequency components may be
discarded in some image processing operation such as JPEG
compression, the very low frequency components of the
colour host image will be utilized for the watermark
embedding.

5.1 The Embedding Algorithm:
In the technique presented here, the colour image is
decomposed into three components R, G and B. Watermark
information will be embedded in the G plane using equation
1 to produce G'. Assume that f (i, j) represents the pixel of the
component of the RGB representation of the colour host
image, w (i, j) represents the binary pixel of the watermark
(1)
Where Qe is the quantization to the nearest even number and
Qo is the quantization to the nearest odd number is a
scaling quantity and it is also the quantization step used to
quantize either to the even or odd number. The predefined
coefficients in each 8x8 sub block are represented by NHB.
The binary watermark digits are randomly scrambled using a
secret key; this scrambling process is essential to reduce the
spatial correlation between the host image and the embedded
watermark. After the scrambling process, a shuffle scheme is
applied for each binary watermark copy before embedding.

International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 7, July 2012)
457

Different shuffle schemes could be applied. Simple shuffle
technique is to reshape the watermark copy as vector and
shift the vector by different shifts before the binary
watermark digits are randomly scrambled using a secret key;
this scrambling process is essential to reduce the spatial
correlation between the host image and the embedded
watermark. After the scrambling process, a shuffle scheme is
applied for each binary watermark copy before embedding.
Different shuffle schemes could be applied. Simple shuffle
technique is to reshape the watermark copy as vector and
shift the vector by different shifts before the .Where WSB is
the number of watermark shifted bits, This shift is necessary
to reduce the spatial relation and to increase the robustness
against vertical cropping attacks.

5.2 The Extraction Algorithm:
The embedded information w (i,j) can be extracted
by performing 8x8 DCT transform for the watermarked host
image and indicate the same coefficients of the host image
that carries the 16 bits of the embedded watermarks using the
same secret key in the initial scrambling operation. The
scrambled watermarks are descrambled to get the original
watermarks. The watermark information can be retrieved by
using a reverse process to the shift scheme which has been
applied in the embedding process. This will yield the original
bits order. It is worth to mention that although the proposed
scheme is blind since it does not require the original host
image for reconstruction, but it requires information such as
the sizes of both host image and watermark image. Finally,
discard the totally degraded copy of the extracted watermarks
and then calculate the average by summing the resultant
watermark copies divided by their number, select the
resultant average watermarks as the final reconstructed
watermark or choose one copy of the extracted watermarks
as the final watermark if it provides better result than the
resultant average watermark. The bit extraction formula is
shown in equation 2
(2)
Where Q is rounded to the nearest integer, the scaling
quantity is the same as the one used in the embedding
process.
VI. ATTACKS
Due to some reasons, there is need of adding,
altering or removing false watermarks. Attacks on
watermarks may be accidental or intentional. Accidental
attacks may cause due to the standard image processing or
due to the compression procedures. An intentional attack
includes cryptanalysis, steganalysis, and image processing
techniques or other attempts to overwrite or remove existing
watermarks. Following are the methods of attacks vary
according to robustness, Perceptibility.
6.1 Mosaic attack:
Mosaic attack is the method in which pictures are
displayed so as to confuse watermark-searching program,
known as Web Crawler. Mosaic is created by subdividing the
original image into randomly sized small images and
displaying the resulting image on webpage. Figure no.1
shows the example of mosaic schemes. The aim is to confuse
the web crawler into thinking that there is no watermark
within the picture because it has been sub divided into
smaller separate pictures. This form of attack becomes to a
large degree obsolete due to new improved methods of
watermarking and more intelligent web crawlers.
6.2 Geometric attack:
Geometric attack is related to geometric properties
of data. It is concerned with images, documents and audio
files. This attack is further classified as-
Subtractive attack:
It involves the attacker in the area of located
watermark if imperceptible and then Removing the mark by
cropping or digital editing.
Distortive attack:
In this attack, attacker attempts to make some
uniform distortive changes in the images such that mark
becomes unrecognizable. These two watermark attacks are
usually performed on robust watermark.
6.3 Stirmark attack:
Starmark is generic tool developed for simple
robustness techniques of image marking algorithms and
steganographic techniques. In its simplest version, stir mark
simulates resembling process in which it introduces same
kind of errors into an image to print it on high quality printer
and scanning it again with high quality scanner. It includes
minor geometric distortion. This testing tool is an effective
program to remove fairly robust watermarks in images and
become a form of attack on its own.



International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 7, July 2012)
458

6.4 Forgery attack:
Forgery attack is also known as Additive attacks in
some cases. Forgery attack include the attacker who can add
his or her own watermark overlaying the original image and
marking the content as their own.
6.5 Inversion attack:
Inversion watermark render the watermark information
ambiguous. The idea behind the invasion attack that attacker
who receives watermarked data can claim that data contains
his watermark also by declaring part of data as his
watermark. The attacker can easily generate the original data
by subtracting the claimed watermark.
6.6 Cryptanalysis:
It is mostly associated with cryptography. It is a
method in which attacker attempts to find the decryption key
for an encrypted pieces of information so that it can be made
useful again. Attacker can remove licensing watermark that
decrypts that data, attacker would use cryptanalysis to find
decryption key so that data can use in decrypted form free
from its watermark.
VII.DIGITAL WATERMARKING TECHNIQUES
Digital watermarking techniques is nothing but
what are the techniques to put digital watermarks onto the
digital media. There are two techniques viz image domain
and transform domain. Several different methods enable
watermarking in the spatial domain. The simplest (too simple
for many applications) is just to flip the lowest-order bit of
chosen pixels. This works well only if the image is not
subject to any modification. A more robust watermark can be
embedded by superimposing a symbol over an area of the
picture. The resulting mark may be visible or not, depending
upon the intensity value. Picture cropping, e.g., (a common
operation of image editors), can be used to eliminate the
watermark.
Spatial watermarking can also be applied using
color separation. In this way, the watermark appears in only
one of the color bands. This renders the watermark visibly
subtle such that it is difficult to detect under regular viewing.
However, the mark appears immediately when the colors are
separated for printing. This renders the document useless for
the printer unless the watermark can be removed from the
color band. This approach is used commercially for
journalists to inspect digital pictures from a photo-stock
house before buying unmarked versions.
Watermarking can be applied in the frequency
domain (and other transform domains) by first applying a
transform like the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). In a similar
manner to spatial domain watermarking, the values of chosen
frequencies can be altered from the original. Since high
frequencies will be lost by compression or scaling, the
watermark signal is applied to lower frequencies, or better
yet, applied adaptively to frequencies that contain important
information of the original picture.
Since watermarks applied to the frequency domain
will be dispersed over the entirety of the spatial image upon
inverse transformation, this method is not as susceptible to
defeat by cropping as the spatial technique. However, there is
more a tradeoff here between invisibility and decodability,
since the watermark is in effect applied indiscriminately
across the spatial image. Table shows a small comparison
between the two different techniques.
Currently there are various techniques for
embedding digital watermarks. Basically, they all digitally
write desired information directly onto images or audio data
in such a manner that the images or audio data are not
damaged. Embedding a watermark should not result in a
significant increase or reduction in the original data.

Spatial Frequency
Computation
Cost
Low High
Robustness Fragile More Robust
Perceptual
Quality
High Control Low Control
Capacity High (depend on the
size of the image)
Low
Example of
Applications
Mainly
Authentication
Copy Rights
Table. Comparison between Spatial and Frequency

VII. EXAMPLE & APPLICATIONS OF DWM

7.1 Broadcast monitoring:
This application identifies that when and where
works are broadcast by recognizing watermarks embedded in
these works. There are varieties of technologies to monitor
playback of sound recording on broadcast. The digital
watermarking is alternative to these technologies due to its
reliable automated detection.

International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 7, July 2012)
459

7.2 Encoding:
According to the thinking of major music
companies and major video studios, encoding happens at
mastering level of sound recording.
In such downstream, transactional watermarks are
also considered. Each song is assigned with unique ID from
the identifier database. After completion of all mastering
processes, ID is encoded in sound recording. To enhance
encoding of audio or video recordings requiring special
processing, the human-assisted watermark key is available.
7.3 Copy and Play Back Control:
The data carried out by watermark may contain
information about copy and display permissions. We can add
a secure module into copy or playback equipment to
automatically extract the permission information and block
further processing if required. This approach is being taken in
(DVD).
7.4 Content Authentication:
The content authentication is nothing but embedding
the signal information in Content. This signature then can be
checked to verify that it has not been alter. By watermarks,
digital signatures can be embedded into the work and any
modification to the work can be detected.

VIII. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF DWM
8.1 Advantages:
Uniquely identifies author of copyrighted works.
Robust design of digital watermark withstand
pirating attacks.
Embedding watermark is easy.
Implementation on PC platform is possible.
8.2 Disadvantages:
The blind watermarking algorithm which is really
robust is not in existence today. By knowing the
exact content of watermark and algorithms to embed
and retrieve it.
Some watermarks vanish if someone manipulates
the image in a program like Photoshop.

IX. FUTURESCOPE
The field of digital watermarking is still evolving
and is attracting a lot of research interest. The watermarking
problem is inherently more difficult that the problem of
encryption, since it is easier to execute a successful attack on
a watermark. In cryptography, a successful attack often
requires deciphering an enciphered message. In the case of
digital watermarking, merely destroying the watermark,
usually by slightly distorting the medium containing it, is a
successful attack, even if one cannot decipher or detect any
hidden message contained in the medium.
X. CONCLUSION
In this paper a new high capacity frequency domain
blind algorithm for colour digital image watermarking is
presented, This algorithm uses the green channel for
watermarking embedding. By comparing our algorithm to
others, we can conclude that the maximum numbers of bits
that can be hidden and recovered successfully from the
watermarked images have been increased. Excellent
performance for the embedding process is achieved for an
embedding strength value of A=24. It has also been
demonstrated that for this embedding strength the signature is
immune to a variety of attacks, including filtering, contrast
balancing, compression, and geometrical transforms such as
resizing. image Adaptive Self Embedding Watermarking
proved robust against various attacks performed. The use of
semi-fragile property helps to detect the location of fraud in
the image. This technique is having a great scope of
opportunities; especially in the field of cyber frauds, court
evidences, certificate or identity forgery and even in the
preservation and transmission of cultural heritage images The
large need of networked multimedia system has created the
need of COPYRIGHT PROTECTION. It is very important to
protect intellectual properties of digital media. Internet
playing an important role of digital data transfer. Digital
watermarking is the great solution of the problem of how to
protect copyright. Digital watermarking is the solution for the
protection of legal rights of digital content owner and
customer.

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460

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