An Optimized Color Image Watermarking Scheme based on HD and SVD in DWT Domain

Authors

  • Mourad Sahir Department of Electronics, Faculty of Technology, LIS Laboratory, University of Setif-1, Algeria
  • Tewfik Bekkouche Department of Electromechanics, Faculty of Technology, ETA Laboratory, University of BBA, Algeria
  • Fairouz Belilita Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences, LIS Laboratory, University of Setif-1, Algeria
  • Nourredine Amardjia Department of Electronics, Faculty of Technology, LIS Laboratory, University of Setif-1, Algeria
Volume: 15 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 21639-21646 | April 2025 | https://doi.org/10.48084/etasr.9504

Received: 4 November 2024 | Revised: 17 December 2024 and 25 January 2025 | Accepted: 10 February 2025 | Online: 6 March 2025


Corresponding author: Tewfik Bekkouche

Abstract

Digital watermarking is considered a trustworthy strategy for proving ownership of valuable digital files such as audio, image, and video documents. Most of the prevailing image watermarking systems embed grayscale or binary image watermarks, while only a few use color images as watermarks. In this paper, we develop a secure, imperceptible, and robust optimized semi-blind color image watermarking technique that uses color images as watermarks. It is based on Hessenberg Decomposition (HD) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) in the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) domain. First, the color host image and color watermark image in RGB space are converted to YCbCr space, and then the watermark data are embedded into the luminance component (Y) of the host image. In this work, the principal component of the watermark's luminance (Y) is implanted into the associated singular value of the host image with an appropriate scaling factor that optimizes the robustness-imperceptibility tradeoff. The Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is used to find the appropriate scaling factors. To further enhance the security, the Arnold transformation is used to scramble the Y channel of the watermark before it is injected into the host image. As demonstrated by the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Normalized Correlation (NC) metrics, the proposed scheme exhibits high invisibility and is robust to most image processing manipulations, geometric operations, and combinational attacks. Compared to various existing color image watermarking schemes that use color images as watermarks, it shows higher imperceptibility and robustness.

Keywords:

color image watermark, Hessenberg decomposition, singular value decomposition, discrete wavelet transform, artificial bee colony

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How to Cite

[1]
Sahir, M., Bekkouche, T., Belilita, F. and Amardjia, N. 2025. An Optimized Color Image Watermarking Scheme based on HD and SVD in DWT Domain. Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research. 15, 2 (Apr. 2025), 21639–21646. DOI:https://doi.org/10.48084/etasr.9504.

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