World Applied Programming, Vol (2), No (4), April 2012.

220-223
ISSN: 2222-2510
2011 WAP journal. www.waprogramming.com

Short Communication on Digital Watermarking in Images

Masoud Nosrati *
Dept of Computer Enginnering
Shaneh Branch,
Islamic Azad University,
Shaneh, Iran.
minibigs_m@yahoo.co.uk

Ronak Karimi
Dept of Computer Engineering
Shaneh Branch,
Islamic Azad University,
Shaneh, Iran.
rk_respina_67@yahoo.com

Hojat Allah Hasanvand

Department of Graphic
Shaneh Branch,
Islamic Azad University,
Shaneh, Iran.
hasanvand_6@yahoo.com

Abstract: This paper will have a brief look to digital watermarking in images. At first, we have a look to different
scopes in the field of data hiding, which are steganography and watermarking. Also, we talk about their
difference. Watermarking system is introduced and the benefits of its usage are talked. Requirements of
watermarking system are another section of proposed study, which introduces the security, imperceptibility,
capacity and robustness as the essential factors of watermarking system. Also, a quick survey on watermarking
techniques with a brief comparison is presented.
Keywords: Watermarking, watermarking system, data hiding, spatial domain, steganography, secure
communication.
I.

INTRODUCTION

A watermark is a recognizable image or pattern in paper that appears as various shades of lightness/darkness when
viewed by transmitted light (or when viewed by reflected light, atop a dark background), caused by thickness or
density variations in the paper [1]. Nowadays, using the digital media in a large scale causes extending watermarking
in digital world. A watermark is a pattern of bits inserted into a digital image, audio or video file that identifies the
file's copyright information (author, rights, etc.). The name watermark is derived from the faintly visible marks
imprinted on organizational stationery [2]. Watermark usually has two features: it is hidden from view during normal
use, only become visible by adopting a special viewing process; and it carries information about the object in which it
is hidden [3].
Studies in the fields of data hiding are divided to some scopes. Figure 1 show these scopes in brief [3]. Data hiding
field generally includes both steganography and watermarking. They have different types, too. Figure 1 includes major
types of them.

Figure 1. Scopes of data hiding techniques

Main categories are steganography and watermarking. The word steganography is derived from the Greek words
stegos meaning cover and grafia meaning writing defining it as covered writing [4]. In fact, steganography

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is the art and technique of hiding a message in a carrier media [5]. Main difference of steganography and
watermarking is the purpose of them. Steganography tries to hide the existence of message in carrier, while
watermarking tries too add a message that can be seen in a secret way.
A watermarking system is consisting of some parts and processes. Figure 2 shows the simple watermarking system [3].
Cover work

Watermark
embedder

Watermarked
work

Watermark
detector

Detected
watermark
message

Watermark
message

Figure 2. States of a watermarking system

In other way, the digital watermarks can be divided into three different types as follows: [6][7]
Visible watermark
Invisible-Robust watermark
Invisible-Fragile watermark
Visible watermark is a secondary translucent overlaid into the primary image. The watermark appears visible to a
casual viewer on a careful inspection. The invisible-robust watermark is embedded in such a way that alternations
made to the pixel value are perceptually not noticed and it can be recovered only with appropriate decoding
mechanism. The invisible-fragile watermark is embedded in such a way that any manipulation or modification of the
image would alter or destroy the watermark [8].
In this paper we are going to have a survey on watermarking in digital images. While, it is applicable in other types of
media such as text, audio, video, etc.
II.

REQUIREMENTS OF WATERMARKING SYSTEM

Generally there are 4 requirements that all the watermarking systems have to consider in order to achieve better
performance [8]:
1. Security: The security requirement of a watermarking system can differ slightly depending on the application.
Watermarking security implies that the watermark should be difficult to remove or alter without damaging the
host signal. As all watermarking systems seek to protect watermark information, without loss of generality,
watermarking security can be regarded as the ability to assure secrecy and integrity of the watermark
information, and resist malicious attacks [9].
2.

Imperceptibility: The imperceptibility refers to the perceptual transparency of the watermark. Ideally, no
perceptible difference between the watermarked and original signal should exist [10][11]. A straightforward
way to reduce distortion during watermarking process is embedding the watermark into the perceptually
insignificant portion of the host signal [11]. However, this makes it easy for an attacker to alter the watermark
information without being noticed.

3.

Capacity: Watermarking capacity normally refers to the amount of information that can be embedded into a
host signal. Generally speaking, capacity requirement always struggle against two other important
requirements, that is, imperceptibility and robustness. A higher capacity is usually obtained at the expense of
either robustness strength or imperceptibility, or both.

4.

Robustness: Watermark robustness accounts for the capability of the watermark to survive signal
manipulations. Apart from malicious attacks, common signal processing operations can pose a threat to the
detection of watermark, thus making it desirable to design a watermark that can survive those operations. For
example, a good strategy to robustly embed a watermark into an image is to insert it into perceptually
significant parts of the image. Therefore, robustness is guaranteed when we consider the case of lossy
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compression which usually discards perceptually insignificant data, thus data hidden in perceptual significant
portions is likely to survive lossy compression operation. However, as this portion of the host signal is more
sensitive to alterations, watermarking may produce visible distortions in the host signal. The exact level of
robustness an algorithm must possess cannot be specified without considering the application scenario [12].
Not all watermarking applications require a watermark to be robust enough to survive all attacks and signal
processing operations. Indeed, a watermark needs only to survive the attacks and those signal processing
operations that are likely to occur during the period when the watermarked signal is in communication
channel. In an extreme case, robustness may be completely irrelevant in some case where fragility is
desirable.
III.

IMAGE WATERMARKING TECHNIQUES

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-stockhouse 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 1. shows a small comparison between the two
different techniques [8].

Table 1. Comparison between Watermarking Techniques [8]

Computation Cost
Robustness
Perceptual Quality
Capacity

Spatial Domain
Low
Fragile
High Control
High (depend on the size of the image)

Frequency Domain
High
More Robust
Low Control
Low

Example of Applications

Mainly Authentication

Copy Rights

Fragile Watermarking
A watermark is said to be fragile if the watermark hidden within the host signal is destroyed as soon as the
watermarked signal undergoes any manipulation. When a fragile watermark is present in a signal, we can infer, with a
high probability, that the signal has not been altered.
Fragile watermarking authentication has an interesting variety of functionalities including tampering localization and
discrimination between malicious and non-malicious manipulations. Tampering localization is critical because
knowledge of where the image has been altered can be effectively used to indicate the valid region of the image, to
infer the motive and the possible adversaries. Moreover, the type of alteration may be determined from the knowledge
of tampering localization [8].
IV.

CONCLUSION

This short communication study presented brief basic information about digital watermarking in images. It includes
some materials like different scopes in data hiding, watermarking systems and their requirements as an effective data

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hiding scope, comparison of steganography and watermarking, watermarking in spatial domain, watermarking
techniques, fragile watermarking, etc.
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