ISSN:2229-6093
Monika Singla et al, Int. J. Comp. Tech. Appl., Vol 2 (5), 1357-1363
Image Watermarking Techniques in Spatial Domain: A Review
Alankrita Aggarwal
Sr .Assistant Professor Department of
Computer Science and Engineering ,Haryana
College Of Technology and Management,
Kaithal,India
alankrita.agg@gmail.com
Abstract
The rapid growth of digital multimedia technologies
brings tremendous attention to the field of digital
watermarking. The owner or the distributor of the
digital images can insert unique watermark into copies
for different customers or receivers, which will be
helpful to identify the source of illegal copies.
Watermarking embeds a secret message into a cover
multimedia data. In media watermarking the secret is
usually a copyright notice and the cover a digital
image. In digital watermarking, robustness is still a
challenging problem if different sets of attacks needed
to be tolerated simultaneously. Many algorithms have
been developed for check the robustness of images In
this paper we are reviewing spatial watermarking
technique for digital images like LSB technique,
BLOCK based and Secure watermarking techniques.
Keywords: Color Image, Spatial Domain, Robust
Watermarking
1. Introduction
A digital watermark is a digital signal or a pattern
embedded into the host media to be protected, such as
an image or audio or video. It contains useful
certifiable information for the owner of the host media,
such as producer's name, company logo, etc; the
watermark can be detected or extracted later to make an
assertion about the host media. There are two important
properties of a watermark; the first is that the
watermark embedding should not alter the quality and
visually of the host image and it should be perceptually
invisible, the second property is robustness with respect
to image distortions. This means that the watermark is
difficult for an attacker to remove and it should be also
robust to common image processing and geometric
operations, such as filtering, resizing, cropping and
image compression. Overviews on image watermarking
techniques can be found in [1],[2], [5] .
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Monika Singla
M.Tech Student Department of Computer
Science and Engineering,Haryana Collegeof
Technology and Management,
Kaithal,India
monika.singla160@gmail.com
1.1. Domain of watermarking
The watermarking techniques can be classified into
two categories: spatial domain and transform domain
techniques. There definitions are as follow
1.1.1. Spatial domain. In spatial domain technique [4],
[7], [10], [11], [12], [14], the watermark embedding is
achieved by directly modifying the pixel values of the
host image. The most commonly used method in the
spatial domain technique is the least significant bit
(LSB). In the least significant bit (LSB) of each pixel in
the host image was modified to embed the secret
message.
1.1.2. Transform domain. In transform domain
technique[2],[3]the host image is first converted into
frequency domain by transformation method such as
the discrete cosine transform (DCT), discrete Fourier
transform (DFT) or discreet wavelet transform (DWT)
,etc. then, transform domain coefficients are altered by
the watermark. The inverse transform is finally applied
in order to obtain the watermarked image. The
frequency domain methods allow an image to be
broken up into different frequency bands. Embedding
the watermark in the low frequency increases the
robustness with respect to image distortions. The high
frequency band of an image is more prone to dropping
due to quantization and it will be lost by compression
or scaling attacks. The middle frequencies embedding
of the watermark avoid the most visual important parts
of the image and it is robust to compression and noise
attacks. There are so many ideas have been proposed
for placing key inside the binary images or watermark
image [10], [4].
We discussed a spatial domain block based
watermarking scheme, LSB technique and secure
watermarking technique. The watermark is a binary
image, which is permuted using a secret key.
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2. General framework for digital watermarking
Watermark is a digital signal or pattern inserted into a
digital data, which can also be referred to as a digital
signature. Watermarking is a key process in the
protection of copyright ownership of electronic data,
including image, videos, audio, etc
Any watermarking scheme (algorithm) consists of
three parts:
(a) The watermark
(b)A watermark embedder (marking insertion
algorithm)
(c)A watermark detector (verification or extraction
or detection algorithm).
2.1. Embedding watermark
The watermark signal, apart from depending on the
watermark information W', may also depend on a key
K and the host data I into which it is embedded, shown
in Equation
W = f 0(I, K, W)
Watermark
Digital
Data Watermarking Watermarked
Data
Secret/Public key
Figure 1.Generic watermarking embedded scheme
2.2. Extracting watermark
Verification algorithm is a design of the
corresponding extraction method that recovers the
watermark information from the signal mixture,
perhaps with the help of the key and the original shown
in Equation (1) or (2)
I0 = g (I, I', K) (1)
Or without the original
I0 = g (I', K) (2)
The input to the scheme is the watermark, the host
data, and an optional public or secret key. The host data
may, depending on the application, be uncompressed or
compressed, however, most proposed methods work on
uncompressed data. The watermark can be of any
nature, such as a number, text, or an image. The secret
or public key is used to enforce security. If the
watermark is not to be read by unauthorized parties, a
key can be used to protect the watermark. In
combination with a secret or a public key, the
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watermarking techniques are usually referred to as
secret and public watermarking techniques,
respectively.
Watermark w
Or original image
Detection
Detection
Text image algorithm Watermark
Secret/public key
Figure 2.Generic watermarking recovery scheme
3. Attacks on watermark
It is found in the literature that the robust
watermarking systems proposed so far can only
withstand some of the possible external attacks but not
all. The attacks against the watermark try to neutralize
the watermark, without damaging the image too much.
The watermark is neutralized if: (a) the detector cannot
detect the watermark (distortion, attenuation etc.), (b)
the detector cannot recognize the watermark in the
image from another one, and (c) the watermark is no
longer in the image.In the field of digital watermark,
there are various categorizations of attacks on
watermarks .
3.1. Unintentional attacks
3.1.1. Compression. Many compression schemes
like JPEG and MPEG can potentially degrade the
datas quality through irretrievable loss of data.
3.1.2.Geometricdistortions. Geometric distortions
are specific to Images videos and include such
operations as rotation, translation, scaling.
3.1.3.Common Signal Processing Operations. it
includes D/A conversion, A/D, conversion,
Resembling.
3.1.4. Cropping . The watermarked image is cropped
in terms of percentage of image size. The effect of
cropping is decided calculating the NC and SC between
extracted watermark and original watermark.
3.2. Intentional attacks
3.2.1 Collusion . A number of authorized recipients of
the image should not be able to come together (collude)
and like the differently watermarked copies to generate
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an unwatermarked copy of the image (by averaging all
the watermarked images).
3.2.2 Forgery. A number of authorized recipients of
the image should not be able to collude to form a
copy of watermarked image with the valid of
embedded watermark of a person not in the group with
an intention of framing a 3rd party.
3.2.3. IBM attack. It should not be possible to
produce a fake original that also performs as well as
the original and also results in the extraction of the
watermark as claimed by the holder of the fake original
4. Existing techniques
Image watermarking became popular in the 1990s.
The most important aspect of image watermarking is
roubustness. The number of image watermarking
techniques has been developed in spatial domain which
considered the roubustness. Watermarking methods
differ only in the part or single aspect of three topics
Signal design
Embedding
Recovery
A Digital image is a 2-D Signal. It Use rectangular
shape areas called pixels. Intensity value of pixels are
represented as I(X,Y). Here pixel resolution is
described with the set of two positive integer numbers,
where the first number is the number of pixel columns
(width) and the second is the number of pixel rows.
Color image is a combination of three frames i.e. Red,
Green, Blue frames.The first technique in spatial
domain is tagging technique. A tag is a square of size N
* N. In a first step, all possible locations in an image
where a tag could possibly be placed are identified by
calculating the local region variance of size N * N in
the image and comparing it to empirically identified
upper and lower limits. A selected image area is tagged
by adding the tag. One selected tag location hides 1 bit
and is only tagged if the bit to embed is set to one. To
recover an embedded bit, the difference between the
original and the tagged image is computed.There was
so many techniques has been introduced .Here we are
dicussing some new one which discussed below.
4.1. LSB technique
The most straightforward method of watermark
embedding would be to embed the watermark into the
least significant bits of the cover object. Fig. 3.1 shows
an example of modifying LSB.
Image: 11001010 00110101 00011010 00000000 ...
Watermark: 1 1 1 0 ...
Watermarked 11001011 00110101 00011011 00000000 .
Image:
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Figure 3 Example of Least significant bit watermarking
4.2.Secure watermarking scheme for color
image
The proposed scheme is of type blind and invisible
watermarking. This scheme introduces the concept of
storing variable number of bits in each pixel based on
the actual color value of pixel. Equal or higher the color
value of channels with respect to intensity of pixel
stores higher number of watermark bits. The Red,
Green and Blue channel of the color image has been
used for watermark embedding. The watermark is
embedded into selected channels of pixel. The
proposed method supports high watermark embedding
capacity, which is equivalent to the size of cover image.
The security of watermark is preserved by permuting
the watermark bits using secret key. The algorithm is
explained in the following sections.
4.2.1 Watermark Embedding.Embedding the
watermark requires the following steps.
Input: Color (Cover) Image (C) and Monochrome
Watermark image (W).
Step 1. Read the watermark image W of size mm
Step 2. Read a binary key k which is the secret key and
compute W'=W K, where is bit wise XOR operator.
Step 3. Read the color image C of size mm and
transfer this image into Red (R), Green (G) and Blue
(B) channels of size mm. Then transfer these R, G, B
channels into biological color model Hue (H)
Saturation (S) and Intensity (I) using the following
equations.
if B G
H= 360 if B > G (3)
S= 1- 3 min(R,G, B) (4)
( R+G+B)
(R + G + B)
I= (5)
3
Step 4. For each pixel select a channel from R, G, B
which is having value I and embed the watermark bit
of W into LSB of selected channels using LSB
substitution.
Step 5. Transfer the modified R, G, B channels into
watermarked color image C '.
4.2.2. Watermark Extraction.Algorithm : Watermark
Extraction.Input : Watermarked Color Image (C and
the secret key (K).
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Step 1.Read the watermarked color image C of size
mm and transfer this image into Red(R '), Green (G')
and Blue (B') channels of size mm. Then transfer
these R', G', B' channels into biological color model
Hue (H'), Saturation (S') and Intensity (I') using the
equations (3), (4) and (5).
Step 2. Read a binary sequence K which is the secret
key.
Step 3. For each pixel select a channel from R', G', B'
which is having value I ' and extract the watermark
bit W from LSB of selected channels.
Step 4. Process the W ' with key array K to get the
extracted watermark W as follows:
W=W' K, where is bit-wise XOR operator.
The performance of extraction algorithm is analyzed
by increasing density of the noise compared in terms
of NC and SC. The increase in the noise density
reduces the performance of extraction algorithm. The
watermarked image is cropped in terms of percentage
of image size.The proposed watermarking algorithm is
robust for cropping on the set of watermarked images.
The algorithm is rigid for upto 40 % cropping. The
watermarked image is compressed with different
Quality factors. The effect of compression is observed
by calculating the NC and SC between extracted
watermark and original watermark. As the compression
factor increases the quality of extracted watermark
decreases. Thus algorithm is robust against
compression of quality factor upto 50. Security of
watermark can be further enhanced by using hash
functions or chaotic binary sequence. The proposed
algorithm is weak to geometrical transformation. Thus
the future work is to design a geometrical transform-
invariant watermarking algorithm.
4.3. A New robust watermarking scheme for
color image in spatial domain
A robust watermark scheme based on a block
probability for color image is presented, which operates
in spatial domain by embedding the watermark image
four times in different positions in order to be robust
against attack The extraction of the watermark depends
on the original image, so it is a non-blind watermarking
scheme. In the proposed method, the watermark image
is a binary image where as the host image is an 8 bit
color image. The four embedded positions are chosen
to hide the watermarks in order to be robust against
cropping attack from the bottom, the top or the left or
the right side of the watermarked image. The blue
component is chosen to hide the watermark because it
is less sensitive to human eyes. The original color
image H with size of 512*512 pixels, which to be
protected by the binary watermark W of size pixels
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32*32 .The Embedding and extraction algorithm is
explained in the following sections.
4.3.1 Watermark embedding. Step 1. A binary logo
image is used as the original watermark W of size
pixels 32*32. The original watermark is permuted to
obtain a pseudo random sequence, which uncorrelated
to the original watermark. This is done by performing
bit wise EX-OR operation between the original
watermark bits and random bits, generated using a
secret key, and then the output sequence, is encoded
using Gray which code. The permutation process of the
Watermark W is described as follows:
Read a binary key k which is the secret key and
compute W'=W K, where is bit wise XOR
operator.
Step 2. The original image H is decomposed into R, G,
and B components and then the B component is divided
into a non-overlapping blocks with size of 8*8 pixels.
Step 3. Private key is used to determine the positions of
embedding the watermark.
Step 4. The encoded watermark W'' is embedded in the
blue component B. For each encoded watermark bit, a
block of 8*8 is modified as follows:
if W''=1;
for all the pixels of the 8*8 blocks
{I'=I+ }
If W''=0;
For all the pixels of the 8*8 blocks
{I'=I- }
Where I' is the modified pixel intensity and I is the
original intensity and is a constant.
Step 5 The modified block of pixels is then positioned
in its original location of the host image and then step 3
and 4 is repeated until all encoded watermark bits W''
are embedded.
Step 6 After embedding the all encoded watermark bits
four times, the R, G, and B' components are composed
to obtain the watermarked image.
1 128 384 512
Watermark 1
128
Watermark3 Watermark4 Waterm3
384
Watermark 2
512
Fig 4 The proposed watermarks embedded positions
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Monika Singla et al, Int. J. Comp. Tech. Appl., Vol 2 (5), 1357-1363
4.3.2 Watermark extraction .The proposed watermark
extraction required the original host image and the
original watermark, therefore, it is a non blind
watermarking scheme. The steps of watermark
extraction are described below.
Step 1. The proposed extraction is based on the
probability (P1, P0) of detecting '1' or '0' bit, which
can be obtained by comparing each pixel (I') in a block
of 8*8 of the watermarked image with the
corresponding pixel (I) in the original image and then
the probability is calculated as follows:
P1=P1+1/64 if I' > I
P0=P0+1/64 if I' I
Step 2. According to the probability (P1, P0), the
extracted watermark bits W'' can be decoded as
follows:
W = 1 if P1 P0
W = 0 if P1< P0
Step 3. The extracted watermark bits for the four
watermarks are decoded using Gray code and then, the
decoded bits are XOR with random bits, which
generated using the same secret key that was used
during the watermark embedding. The decoded
watermarks bits are reordering to images W'1, W'2,
W'3, W'4.
Step 4. we calculate the normalized cross correlation
between the original watermark image W and the
extracted watermarks W'1, W'2, W'3, W'4 to make a
binary decision on whether a given watermark exists or
not. We choose 0.5 as the threshold for watermark
decision.
Step 5. The normalized cross correlation is defined by
Wi jW'i j
i j
NCC=
(Wij)2
i j
Where W i j and W' i j are the pixel values at the
position (i, j) of the original and the extracted
watermark. This scheme is highly robust against
various of image processing operations such as,
filtering, cropping, scaling, compression, rotation,
randomly removal of some rows and columns lines and
salt and paper noise.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, spatial domain watermarking techniques
for color Images are discussed .LSB is proved to be
simple and powerful tools for Steganography but lack
the robustness.In case of secure watermarking
technique, the security of watermark is preserved by
permuting the watermark bits using secret key. The
increase in the noise density and compression factor
reduces the performance of extraction algorithm. The
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ISSN:2229-6093
algorithm is rigid for upto 40 % cropping.But in case of
a New Robust Watermarking Scheme for Color Image
in Spatial Domain,cropping results are better but
algorithm is weak to geometrical transformation attack
such as rotation, translation, scaling.To get better result
in case of noise attack,we can place watermark at five
different positions and used another image as a key in
watermark to increase security .
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[13] Nagaraj V. Dharwadkar and B. B. Amberker ,Secure

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