2017 Fourth International Conference on Image Information Processing (ICIIP)
A Transform Domain Based Robust Color Image
Watermarking Scheme for Single and Dual
Attacks
Nasir N. Hurrah1, Student member, IEEE, Nazir A. Loan2, Shabir A. Parah3 and Javaid A. Sheikh4
Dept. of Electronics and IT
University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India.
{1Nasirnabi, 2Nazirlone}@kashmiruniversity.net, 3shabireltr@gmail.com, 4sjavaid_29ku@yahoo.co.in
Abstract— This paper proposes an efficient watermarking
scheme based on hybrid transform domain. The watermarking
scheme is blind, robust and secure. The scheme has been developed
to withstand dual attacks which may be combination of signal
processing and geometric attacks. For achieving the said goals, a
single watermark has been embedded in all the three components
(RGB) of the color image using a new interblock differencing
method in discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain. Discrete
wavelet transform (DWT) is used prior to embedding in order to get
LL sub-band from each of the three color image components. The
principle of maximum probability is applied to select the watermark
bit after extracting the watermark from the three components of the
color image. Multiple encryption techniques have also been
employed in order to increase the security of the watermark. The
experimental results prove that the proposed scheme is highly
robust to almost all kind of signal processing attacks including
geometric attacks like rotation, cropping and resizing. Also the
watermarked image is subjected to two simultaneous attacks one
after other to prove the robustness of the scheme to dual attacks.
The results hence obtained for different attacks are presented in
terms of parameters like PSNR, NCC, BER and BCE to test the
performance of the scheme.
Keywords— Robust watermark, Blind Watermark, Arnold cat
map; Chaos encryption
I. INTRODUCTION
The ease of communication using internet has converted
the world into a global village. This ease of communication,
however, poses a serious threat to data integrity and data
privacy. The copyright and authentication issues also creep
in due to the fact that digital content like images, text, audio
or video can be easily copied, modified and circulated
illegally with the present day multimedia technology. In such
a scenario, techniques are required to take care of the issues
encountered by the industry so as to protect the Intellectual
Property Rights (IPR) and authenticate the data. A variety of
methods used for the purpose are steganography,
watermarking and encryption [1-3]. Digital image
watermarking, deals with embedding a special data
(watermark) in a cover medium, is the most viable solution
to take care of IPR and content authentication. Watermarking
has found a niche role in healthcare systems, defense sector,
multimedia industry etc., as an instrument for the protection
of information, for secure sharing and handling of digital
978-1-5090-6734-3/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
images. Watermarking advances have conveyed efficient
development in health management systems [4,5].
Currently a lot of work is being done for making
watermarking systems robust in order to achieve copyright
protection and secure communication. The effectiveness of
the watermarking system is determined by properties like
robustness, imperceptivity, security, computational
complexity and capacity. The watermarking scheme is said
to be robust, if the watermarking data secretly embedded can
be extracted to a significant level even after exposed to
various signal processing attacks. The imperceptivity of the
scheme is determined by the level up to which host
information is unaffected after embedding the watermark.
Similarly, the capacity is determined by number of bits that
can be embedded into original data without distorting the
significant information.
Several techniques have been proposed in literature for
copyright protection and data integrity which are either
implemented in spatial domain and in transform domain. In
transform domain most popularly used techniques are DCT,
DWT, singular value decomposition (SVD) and integer
wavelet transform (IWT).
Spatial domain techniques are usually used for fragile
watermarking because their robustness is low for most signal
processing attacks. An imperceptible watermarking scheme
in spatial domain for color images has been proposed in [6].
The scheme shows efficient imperceptivity but the robustness
as required for copyright protection is not up to the mark.
There has been no provision for security of the watermark to
be embedded and performance against geometric attacks is
very poor.
The advantages of the spatial and transform domain can
also be combined to improve the results of the watermarking
algorithm. The concept of DCT domain to calculate the DC
coefficients of 8x8 blocks extracted from luminance
component of host image directly in spatial domain without
using DCT transform has been used in [7]. The robustness of
the scheme is good for various attacks excluding geometric
attacks where the performance is very low.
A blind and digital image watermarking scheme in DWT-
SVD domain has been proposed in [8]. The robustness of the
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 2017 Fourth International Conference on Image Information Processing (ICIIP)

scheme is achieved by embedding watermark in all four sub- and the encrypted logos are shown in Fig. 1. The application
bands of the cover image after performing two level DWT of double layer encryption using Arnold and chaos cat maps
operation on it. Although the authors claim the scheme to be before embedding makes the watermark information highly
robust against various attacks but the values of the parameters secure.
like NCC and BER are not recorded to prove the point. Also
the scheme is less secure and computationally complex. A
blind watermarking scheme based on differential embedding
has been proposed for gray-scale images in DWT and DCT
domains [9]. The scheme performs well for most of the signal
processing attacks in terms of imperceptivity and robustness
but the robustness has only been analyzed in case of
Color Image Watermark(WM) Encrpted WM
geometric attacks for a very narrow range. Also scheme is
only valid for gray-scale image and not currently trending
color images and there has been no provision for security of Fig.1. Original and Encrypted watermark
the watermark.
B. Data Embedding
There are several other techniques proposed that use The working of the proposed algorithm is shown in Fig. 2.
encryption techniques in order to enhance security of the The main steps of the scheme are described in following steps:
watermarking system. The algorithm proposed in [10] proves
to be secure and robust but has been tested only for salt and Step 1: The first step is to divide the original color image
pepper noise and its performance against other signal into red(R), green(G) and blue(B) components.
processing attacks is not analyzed. Similarly, a much Step 2: A DWT (1 level) on each of the three color
improved robust watermarking scheme implemented in the components to get four frequency sub-bands of the respective
DCT domain has been proposed in [11]. The technique components, i.e., LL, LH, HL and HH.
employs efficient inter-block differencing method to achieve
high perceptual quality and robustness. But the limitation of Step 3: Take the LL component of each DWT
the scheme is that there is no provision for security of the transformed component and divide it into 4x4 sub-blocks.
watermark The techniques implemented using transform For embedding the four watermark bits select four 4x4 sub-
domain techniques have proven to be most robust against all blocks at each embedding cycle. These four blocks are
of the signal processing attacks. An artificial bee colony represented by B1, B2, B3 and B4.
(ABC) concept has been used to increase the security of a
watermarking technique based on DWT and SVD domains
[12]. The proposed technique proves to be quite secure but
the imperceptivity is poor and there is much more room for
increasing robustness. Similar other robust image
watermarking techniques have been proposed in literature for
copyright protection and other security applications. [13,14].
The main areas of concern of these techniques are
multimedia, defense and health care applications.
In this paper, we propose a blind, secure and robust digital
image watermarking scheme based on DCT and DWT
techniques for copyright protection. The algorithm has been
tested for color images in which watermark is embedded
using its RGB space. The security of the watermark in the
proposed technique has been increased with the help of two
encryption techniques, Arnold cat map and chaos encryption.
Fig. 2. Block Diagram of Embedding
II. PROPOSED ALGORITHM
A watermarking algorithm has three main phases which Step 4: Perform block level DCT transform on each
include watermark generation phase, watermark embedding selected 4x4 sub-block. Let the DCT coefficients of four
phase and watermark extracting phase. The proposed scheme blocks be represented by CB1(x, y), CB2(x, y), CB3(x, y), and
uses 64 × 64 binary image watermark logo W, and a color CB4(x, y). Where ‘x’ gives row position and ‘y’ gives column
image of size of 512 × 512 as cover image. The detailed position of a DC coefficient in a 4x4 sub-block. Before
algorithm is described in the following sub-section. embedding watermark bits select three initial parameters ‘a’,
‘δ’ and ‘∆’. According to the rule described in Table I, a
A. Watermark Generation watermark bit is embedded by pushing the value of the two
The watermark logo ‘W’ is encrypted using Arnold selected DC coefficients in a particular zone.
transform followed chaos encryption methods. The original

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 2017 Fourth International Conference on Image Information Processing (ICIIP)
Table I: Embedding Algorithm
Embedding Algorithm for one zone.
Initialize a, δ and ∆.
Set CB1(4,3) – CB2(4,4) = d
For w(x) = 1;
If d >= (a + δ)
Begin loop: CB1(4,3) = CB1(4,3) - ∆
CB2(4,4) = CB2(4,4) + ∆
End loop when d < (a + δ);
Where w(x) is the current watermark bit to be embedded.
Similarly, two more zones are defined for embedding
watermark bit ‘1’ using parameters ‘a’ and ‘δ’. In the same
manner three zones are defined for embedding watermark bit
‘0’. The predefined embedding parameters ‘a’, ‘δ’ and ‘∆’
and some other scaler constants are different for each R, G
and B components and their values are selected such that the
DC coefficients fall in a specific range which is different
watermark bit ’0’ and ‘1’.
Step 5: After embedding of secret information is
complete in the respective R, G and B components IDCT is
applied on the respective 4x4 sub-blocks followed by
application of IDWT on modified LL components and some
post-processing to get desired watermarked image.
C. Data Extraction
The watermark extraction process involves similar steps
as that involved at embedding stage up till step 3 as described
by the block diagram as described in Fig. 2. This is followed
by extraction algorithm wherein resulting zone decides the
watermark bit. After extracting the encrypted watermark bits
from the watermarked image inverse Arnold and chaos
encryption techniques are applied to get the data bits of the
watermark. This is followed by some post-processing steps
to get the original watermark.
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The experimental results of the proposed scheme prove
that the scheme performs efficiently against various signal
processing attacks. For carrying out the necessary tests
MATLAB 2015a and system with core i7 configuration has
been used. Various images of size 512 x 512 and watermark
of size 64 x 64 were taken for testing the algorithm. But for
comparison with previously recorded technique only results
of Lena image are written in the paper. The attacks for which
the proposed algorithm was tested are: 3×3 Median
Filtering(MF), salt and Pepper noise (S&P) with noise
density 0.01, Histogram Equalization (HE), Gaussian Noise
(GN) with mean zero and variance 0.001, JPEG
Compression, Low pass Filtering (LPF), Sharpening (S),
Speckle Noise (SN), Weiner Filtering (WN), Average
Filtering (AF), Poisson Noise (PN). Similarly, the scheme
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has been tested for various geometric attacks like cropping,
resizing, rotation etc.
Fig. 3 shows the original Pepper and Airplane images and
the corresponding watermarked images in which the
watermark logo has been embedded. The perceptual quality
of the watermarked image is said to be good if its PSNR is
greater than 36dB. The PSNR of the proposed scheme has
been recorded greater 40 dB which is obviously greater than
cut-off of PSNR.
Original Image Watermarked Original Image Watermarked
Image Image
PSNR=41dB PSNR=40.56dB
Fig. 3. Example of two watermarked images
The imperceptivity analysis of watermarked images
against original input images were carried out and the results
were achieved in terms of Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and
Structural Similarity (SSIM). Similarly, the robustness
analysis was carried out in terms of Normalized Cross
Correlation (NCC) and Bit Error Rate (BER). The objective
quality metrics like PSNR, NCC and BER are
mathematically defined as follows:
( ) = 10 (5)
Where MSE is the mean square error. The BER is defined
as the ratio of number of erroneous data bits extracted to the
total number of embedded bits.
(%) = 1/k ∑ B(j) ⊕ Bx(j) × 100 (6)
Where k is the total number of data bits that are
embedded, B(j) is original jth bit and Bx(j) is the jth extracted
bit.
∑ ∑ (, ) (, )
= ∑ ∑ [ ( , )]
(7)
Where M×N is the size of watermark, ( , ) is original
embedded watermark bit at position (i, j) and ( , ) is the
extracted watermark bit at position (i, j).
BCE = BT – BE (8)
Where BT and BE define the total number of bits
embedded and bits in error at extraction step respectively.
Further, it is worth to mention that attacks have been
applied in two ways: (i) single attack and (ii) a combination
of two different attacks one after another. The results so
obtained for combined attacks are reported in Table II and
Table III which reveal that the proposed scheme is highly
robust to almost every kind of signal processing attack
including geometric attacks. The subjective metrics of the
proposed scheme has been shown in Fig. 4. From the results
it is clear that the extracted watermark is well recognizable.
 2017 Fourth International Conference on Image Information Processing (ICIIP)

The comparison has been performed for the Lena image and
similar results were obtained for the other images like [6] Proposed
baboon, pepper and airplane. 5000
No Attack Median Filtering Gaussian Noise
4000

3000

B.C.E
2000

1000
NCC BER NCC BER NCC BER 0
1 0 0.98 2.19 0.99 0.02
80 70 60 50 40 30 20
Histogram Equalization Low Pass Filtering Weiner Filtering
Quality Factor(QF)

Fig. 5. B.C.E vs JPEG Comparison against [6]

NCC BER NCC BER NCC BER One of the main strengths of the proposed technique is that
0.98 1.855 0.94 5.90 0.98 1.90 it can resist dual attacks as have been shown in the Table III.
JPEG (QF = 80) Crop(Middle 10%) Resizing (400%)
Different attacks have been applied on the watermarked image
simultaneously one after other and the extracted watermark
has been tested for robustness using quality metrics BER and
NCC.
TABLE III. BER AND NCC METRICS OF PROPOSED SCHEME
NCC BER NCC BER NCC BER Attacks Peppers Airplane
0.97 2.00 0.98 1.11 1 0
Fig. 4. Extracted watermarks and corresponding objective metrics. BER NCC BER NCC
o
Rotate (35 ) + Crop 9.88 0.98 10.30 0.98
The results so obtained have been compared with a state (10%)
of art technique and the comparison results are reported in S&P + Crop (25%) 11.40 0.96 11.40 0.96
Table II and Fig. 5, which reveal that the proposed scheme S & P + GN 7.42 0.93 6.20 0.93
outperforms the technique under comparison.
Sharpening + crop 6.30 0.97 14.47 0.94
(10%)
TABLE II. COMPARISON OF PROPOSED SCHEME WITH [6]
S & P + MF 4.41 0.96 4.95 0.95
Attacks Abrahim et. al. Proposed
Rotate (350)+ scale 3.12 0.98 4.02 0.97
B.C.E B.C.E up (200%)
No Attack 4096 4096
Sharpening + Rotate 3.88 0.97 4.55 0.96
S & P Noise 3904 4014 (10o)

Poisson Noise 3516 4080 Rotate (350)+ scale 8.45 0.93 8.76 0.92
down (50%)

Speckle Noise 3494 4082 Rotate (350) + 3.45 0.96 4.19 0.95
Brighten(20)
Avg. Filtering 3700 3854
Rotate (350) + 3.67 0.96 4.05 0.95
Darken(20)
Gaussian LPF 4095 4095
crop (10%) + 3.22 0.97 3.56 0.97
Sharpening 3744 3987 Brighten(20)
Crop 25% 3702 3946 crop (10%) + 2.34 0.97 3.72 0.96
Darken(20)
Crop 50% 2048 3803
MF +Sharpening 4.30 0.96 5.49 0.95
Crop 75% 1024 3730

Resizing 50% 3845 4096 S & P + Sharpening 4.78 0.97 5.03 0.95

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 2017 Fourth International Conference on Image Information Processing (ICIIP)

IV. CONCLUSION Communications (ICAECC), 2014 International Conference on, pp. 1-

This paper proposes a blind and robust watermarking
technique for color images in the hybrid transform domain.
The security of the watermark has been increased by using
dual encryption methods. After separating host color image
into its three constituent components the same watermark
was embedded in each of the three RGB components. The
experimental results demonstrated that the use of this concept
provides high security and robustness in the presence of
different attacks. The probability for watermark extraction is
hence very high. The proposed scheme proves to be highly
efficient compared to other recent proposals recorded in the
literature. As compared to previous techniques the scheme
has been tested against all of signal processing and geometric
attacks and has proven to resist all of the attacks.
8. IEEE, 2014.
[11] S. A. Parah, J. A. Sheikh, N. A. Loan, and G. M. Bhat, "Robust and
blind watermarking technique in DCT domain using inter-block
coefficient differencing." Digital Signal Processing 53 (2016): pp.
11-24.
[12] I. A. Ansari, M. Pant, and C. W. Ahn, "ABC optimized secured image
watermarking scheme to find out the rightful ownership." Optik-
International Journal for Light and Electron Optics 127, no. 14
(2016): pp. 5711-5721.
[13] S A. Parah, F. Ahad, J. A. Sheikh, and G. M. Bhat, "On the realization
of robust watermarking system for medical images." In India
Conference (INDICON), 2015 Annual IEEE, pp. 1-5. IEEE, 2015.
[14] S. A. Parah, J. A. Sheikh, N. Dey, and G. M. Bhat, "Realization of a
New Robust and Secure Watermarking Technique Using DC
Coefficient Modification in Pixel Domain and Chaotic
Encryption." Journal of Global Information Management (JGIM) 25,
no. 4 (2017): pp. 80-102.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the Ministry of
Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Govt. of
India, for supporting under Visvesvaraya PHD Scheme and
the Department of Science and Technology (DST) New
Delhi for providing financial support under DST inspire
fellowship scheme.
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