INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ROORKEE

DIGITAL IMAGE WATERMARKING

Guided by: Prof Kumar Sanjeev

Bijon Guha, Nanoti Saraswati

IVth Year Int. MSc. Applied Mathematics

WHAT IS A WATERMARK?

Awatermarkisaform,imageortextthatisimpressedonto
paper,whichprovidesevidenceofitsauthenticity
Example:Adistinguishingmarkimpressedonpaperduring
manufacture;visiblewhenpaperishelduptothelight(e.g.$
Bill)

WHAT IS DIGITAL
WATERMARKING?

Digitalwatermarkingisanextensionofwatermarking
conceptinthedigitalworld.
Adigitalwatermarkisapatternofbitsinsertedintoadigital
image,audioorvideofilethatidentifiesthefilescopyright
information(author,rights,etc.)

Importance of Digital
Watermarking

AsseenaboveinFig,Alicecreatesanoriginalimageandwatermarksit
beforepassingittoBob.IfBobclaimstheimageandsellscopiestoother
peopleAlicecanextractherwatermarkfromtheimageprovingher
copyrighttoit.
ThecaveathereisthatAlicewillonlybeabletoprovehercopyrightofthe
imageifBobhasntmanagedtomodifytheimagesuchthatthewatermark
isdamagedenoughtobeundetectableoraddedhisownwatermarksuch
thatitisimpossibletodiscoverwhichwatermarkwasembeddedfirst.

VISIBLE vs INVISIBLE
Watermarks
Visible

* To discourage
unauthorized usage
* Act as an
advertisement

Invisible

* They do not cause any

degradation in the aesthetic
quality or in the usefulness of
the data
* They can be detected and
extracted later to facilitate a
claim of ownership, yielding
relevant information as well 5

Processes Involved In
Watermarking

INSERTI
ON

EXTRACTI
ON

Methods tried..

LSBDigitalwatermarking
Wavelettransformbasedmethod(Underconstruction..)

LSB Digital Watermarking

Thismethodisbasedonthepixelvalues
LeastSignificantBit(LSB)modifications.
Ifweuseagrayscalebitmapimage,whichis8-bit,wewould
needtoreadinthefileandthenadddatatotheleastsignificantbitsof
eachpixel,inevery8-bitpixel.
TheprincipleofencodingusestheLeastSignificantBitofeachofthese
bytes,thebitonthefarrightside.Ifdataisencodedtoonlythelasttwo
significantbits(whicharethefirstandsecondLSB)ofeachcolor
componentitismostlikelynotgoingtobedetectable;thehumanretina
becomesthelimitingfactorinviewingpictures

EXAMPLE OF LSB
Considerapixelfromtheinputimage;say249andapixelfromthe
watermarksay,155
Nowhidethepixelvalueofthewatermarkinthetwoleastsignificantbits
oftheinputimage

1.Thebinaryrepresentationof249is11111001
2.Thebinaryrepresentationof155is10011011
3.Makethetwoleastsignificantbitsofinputimagevalue
249tozerosi.e.11111000
4.FindthetwoMostsignificantbitsofthewatermarkvalue
155i.e.10
5.Nowplacethetwomostsignificantbitsofthewatermark
atthetwoleastsignificantbitsoftheinputimage
6.11111000+00000010=11111010i.e.250
9

EXAMPLE OF LSB

Original
Image

Watermark
Image

Result:
Watermarked
Image

10

EXAMPLE OF LSB
How to retrieve the
watermark:

Method 1:
Subtract the input image
(without watermark) from
the watermarked Image
Method 2:
Retrieve the two least
significant bits of the
image

11

12

Wavelet Transform Based method

(Under construction..)

After the original image has been DWT transformed, it is decomposed

into 4
frequency districts which is one low-frequency district(LL)
and three high-frequency districts(LH,HL,HH).
A two-dismensional image after three-times DWT decomposed can be
shown as Fig.1

13

Wavelet Transform Based method

(Under construction..)

The information of low frequency district is a image close to the

original image.
Most signal information of original image is in this frequency district
The frequency districts of LH, HL and HH respectively represents the
level detail, the upright detail and the diagonal detail of the original
image
According to the character of HVS, human eyes is sensitive to the
change of smooth district of image, but not sensitive to the tiny
change of edge, profile and streak.
Therefore, its hard to conscious that putting the watermarking signal
into the big amplitude coefficient of high-frequency band of the
image DWT transformed.
Then it can carry more watermarking signal and has good concealing
effect

14

REFERENCES
[1] Abdullah Bamatraf , Rosziati Ibrahim , Mohd. Najib B. Mohd Salleh,
Digital Watermarking Algorithm Using LSB 2010 International
Conference on Computer Applications and Industrial Electronics (ICCAIE
2010), December 5-7, 2010, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
[2] Introduction-to-digital-watermarking
http://arnab.org/notes/introduction-to-digital-watermarking
[3] Digital-image-watermarking:http://angeljohnsy.blogspot.com/2014/06/digital-image-watermarking-part-1.html
[4] Mei Jiansheng, Li Sukang and Tan Xiaomei, A Digital Watermarking
Algorithm Based On
DCT and DWT 2009 International Symposium on Web Information
Systems and Applications (WISA09)

15

16