DIGITAL WATERMARKING TOOL

MAJOR PROJECT

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR

THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF

B-Tech
(Computer Science)

SUBMITTED BYGAURAV KUMAR

August 2015

GGS College of Modern Technology,

Kharar

NAME-GAURAV KUMAR
PTU REGISTRATION No cum Roll No-1242787
ADDRESS: - Omega city, Flat no-407D, Near Chandigarh Ludhiana highway
CONTACT:-9569991123
E-MAIL:-kgaurav776@gmail.com
BRANCH-COMPUTER SCIENCE
YEAR OF ADMISSION-2012
NO.OF SUBJECTS PASS TILL DATE-26
PROPOSED TOPIC DIGITAL WATERMARKING TOOL

ABSTRACT
The enormous popularity of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s demonstrated the
commercial potential of offering multimedia resources through the digital networks. Since
commercial interests seek to use the digital networks to offer digital media for profit, they have
a strong interest in protecting their ownership rights. Digital watermarking has been proposed as
one way to accomplish this.
A digital watermark is a digital signal or pattern inserted into a digital image. Since this signal
or pattern is present in each unaltered copy of the original image, the digital watermark may also
serve as a digital signature for the copies. A given watermark may be unique to each copy (e.g.
to identify the intended recipient), or be common to multiple copies (e.g. to identify the document
source). In either case, the watermarking of the document involves the transformation of the
original into another form. This distinguishes digital watermarking from digital fingerprinting
where the original file remains intact, but another file is created that "describes" the original file's
content. For example, the checksum field for a disk sector would be a fingerprint of the preceding
block of data. Similarly, hash algorithms produce fingerprint files.

AKNOWLEDGEMENT

At first I would like to thank the most gracious, the merciful Almighty GOD for providing us
enough strength and patience that carried through the work and enable me to complete this work.
I would like to express my gratitude to all those who gave me helping hand in completing this
major project. I want to thank my Class In-charge Mr. Pradeep Kumar for helping me whenever
I needed it the most. My friends have also supported me in my work. I want to thank them all for
their help, support, interest and valuable hints.

Table of Content

Contents

Page no

Introduction

6-7

Brief Literature survey

8-9

Problem formulation

10

Objectives

11-12

Methodology/ Planning of work

13

Facilities required for proposed work

14

Proposed Place of work

15

Conclusion

16

References

17

INTRODUCTION
The so-called digital watermarking are also referred to as simply watermarking, a pattern of
bits inserted into a digital image, audio or video file that identifies the file's copyright information
(author, rights, etc.), it's digital watermark. The name comes from the faintly visible digital
watermarks imprinted on stationery that identify the manufacturer of the stationery. The purpose
of digital watermarking is to provide copyright protection for intellectual property that's in digital
format.
Digital watermarking is designed to add some digital information to the multimedia data, such
as images (digital watermarking images), voice and video signal (digital watermarking video)
and so on. It aims to distinguish the authority of documents, protect copyright functions and some
other functions. Digital image watermarking usually embeds visible or invisible digital
watermarking in the main document, without affecting the appearance and integrity of original
document.
Digital watermark can embed some information that can protect copyright or track infringing
behaviors in the protected digital data(such as images, video, audio, etc.) .The embedded
information can be the author's serial number, company logo, meaningful text and so on.
The project presented exists in a program, developed in Matlab, which provides the possibility
of inserting a watermark within an image.
Wikipedia gives the following definition of watermarking: "'inclusion of information within a
multimedia file, or other, that can then be detected or extracted"; basically it is a technique used
in various fields (the protection of content -digital signatures or trademarks of Copyright- data
encryption), used even by terrorism (stenographic watermarking).

HISTORY
The term "digital watermark" was first coined in 1992 by Andrew Tirkel and Charles Osborne.
Watermarks are identification marks produced during the paper making process. The first
watermarks appeared in Italy during the 13th century, but their use rapidly spread across Europe.
They were used as a means to identify the papermaker or the trade guild that manufactured the
paper. The marks often were created by a wire sewn onto the paper mold. Watermarks continue
to be used today as manufacturer's marks and to prevent forgery

Fig. Digital watermarking

Also referred to as simply watermarking, 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 comes
from the faintly visible watermarks imprinted on stationery that identify the manufacturer of the
stationery. The purpose of digital watermarks is to provide copyright protection for intellectual
property that's in digital format.
Unlike printed watermarks, which are intended to be somewhat visible, digital watermarks are
designed to be completely invisible, or in the case of audio clips, inaudible. Moreover, the actual

bits representing the watermark must be scattered throughout the file in such a way that they
cannot be identified and manipulated. And finally, the digital watermark must be robust enough
so that it can withstand normal changes to the file, such as reductions from lossy
compression algorithms.
Satisfying all these requirements is no easy feat, but there are a number of companies offering
competing technologies. All of them work by making the watermark appear as noise - that is,
random data that exists in most digital files anyway. To view a watermark, you need a special
program that knows how to extract the watermark data.
Watermarking is also called data embedding and information hiding

BRIEF LITERATURE SURVEY

The increasing amount of research on watermarking over the past decade has been largely driven
by its important applications in digital copyrights management and protection. One of the first
applications for watermarking was broadcast monitoring. It is often crucially important that we
are able to track when a specific video is being broadcast by a TV station. This is important to
advertising agencies that want to ensure that their commercials are getting the air time they paid
for. Watermarking can be used for this purpose. Information used to identify individual videos
could be embedded in the videos themselves using watermarking, making broadcast monitoring
easier. Another very important application is owner identification. Being able to identify the
owner of a specific digital work of art, such as a video or image can be quite difficult.
Nevertheless, it is a very important task, especially in cases related to copyright infringement.
So, instead of including copyright notices with every image or song, we could use watermarking
to embed the copyright in the image or the song itself. Transaction tracking is another interesting
application of watermarking. In this case the watermark embedded in a digital work can be used
to record one or more transactions taking place in the history of a copy of this work. For example,
watermarking could be used to record the recipient of every legal copy of a movie by embedding
a different watermark in each copy. If the movie is then leaked to the Internet, the movie
producers could identify which recipient of the movie was the source of the leak. Finally, copy
control is a very promising application for watermarking. In this application, watermarking can
be used to prevent the illegal copying of songs, images of movies, by embedding a watermark in
them that would instruct a watermarking compatible DVD or CD writer to not write the song or
movie because it is an illegal copy.
Added Protection
Digital watermarks cannot be removed or altered, making them a very important tool when
fighting copyright infringement on the Web. Digital watermarks allow users to legally use
9

content, while adding security to the content to prevent illegal usage. Digital watermarks are
"robust," meaning they are able to survive attacks from potential hackers or any type of
manipulation, in addition to providing information about the original owner.

Visible or Invisible?
Invisible digital watermarks are generally undetectable to the human eye and ear, but can be
detected by computers, DVD recorders, digital cameras or other devices that are equipped with
the appropriate software. If an image is used illegally, an invisible watermark not only notifies
the user of the legal copyright owner, but may also show the prosecution methods the owner will
use if the image is used or copied illegally. To combat the estimated 500,000 movies illegally
downloaded every day, the movie industry frequently uses invisible watermarks causing the
words "do not copy" to appear on illegal copies.

Applications :-

Content protection for audio and video content

Forensics and piracy deterrence

Content filtering (includes blocking and triggering of actions)

Communication of ownership and copyrights

Document and image security

Authentication of content and objects (includes government IDs)

Broadcast monitoring

Locating content online

Rich media enhancement for mobile phones

10

PROBLEM FORMULATION

Digital watermarking relates to a technology known as steganography, which literally means

"covered writing." It is a technique designed to secure a message by hiding that message within
another object so that it can be kept secret from everyone except the intended recipient. This is
quite different from cryptography that renders the message (which is typically visible or audible)
unintelligible to unauthorized viewers to prevent access.

Requirements of watermarks

To be effective in the protection of the ownership of intellectual property, the invisibly

watermarked document should satisfy several criteria:

The watermark must be difficult or impossible to remove, at least without visibly

degrading the original image

The watermark must survive image modifications that are common to typical imageprocessing applications (e.g. scaling, colour requantisation, dithering, cropping and
image compression)

An invisible watermark should be imperceptible so that the view of the image is

unaffected

For some invisible watermarking applications, watermarks should be readily detectable

by the proper authorities, even if imperceptible to the average observer. Such decodability
without requiring the original, un-watermarked image would be necessary for efficient
recovery of property and subsequent prosecution.

One can understand the challenge of researchers in this field since the above requirements
are stringent and sometimes clash with one another. The litmus test of a watermarking
method would be that it is accepted and used on a large, commercial scale, and that it
stands up in a court of law. None of the digital techniques have yet to meet these tests.
11

OBJECTIVES
The main characteristics of digital watermark:-

Robustness: The watermark should be able to withstand after normal signal processing
operations

such

as

image

cropping,

transformation,

compression

etc.

Imperceptibility: The watermarked image should look like same as the original image to the
normal

eye.

The

viewer

cannot

detect

that

watermark

is

embedded

in

it.

Security: An unauthorized person cannot detect, retrieve or modify the embedded watermark.
Depending on the ability of the watermark to withstand normal signal processing operations,
digital watermarking can be categorized as robust, fragile and semi-fragile watermarking. Robust
watermarks are detectable even after some image processing operations has been performed on
the watermarked image such as image scaling, bending, cropping, and so on. Robust watermarks
are mainly used for copyright protection. Fragile watermarks became invalid even if a slight
modification is done to the watermarked image. Fragile watermarks are mainly used for
authentication purpose. Semi-fragile watermarks allow some acceptable distortion to the
watermarked image. Beyond this acceptance level if any modification is done to the watermarked
image, the watermark will not be detected.

12

METHODOLOGY/PLANNING OF WORK

Fig. Working of watermark tool

Cover work

Watermark
Embedder

Watermarked

Watermark
Detector

work

Watermark Message
Fig. A watermark system

13

Detected
watermarked
work

FACILITIES REQUIRED FOR PROPOSED WORK

Hardware requirements: Processor

: Intel Pentium 1.60ghz

Hard disk

: 40 GB

Ram

: 1 GB

Cache memory

: 3 MB

Monitor

: 15 color monitor

Keyboard
Mouse
Software requirements: Operating System

Windows XP

Software

MATLAB

14

PROPOSED PLACE OF WORK

At home
At college

15

CONCLUSION
The Future of Digital Watermarking
A number of companies, such as the Digimarc Corporation, Sony and IBM have introduced
digital watermarking software applications that allow individuals to imbed watermarks within
image, audio and video files to protect them from copyright infringement. The watermarks may
be viewed with software and can reveal either a unique identification code that can be traced to
the copyright owner or specific information about the copyright owner.

Though publishers have been clamoring for some means to protect their material on electronic
networks, there has been no rush yet to embrace any of the current schemes. This could be just
due to a period of inspection and appraisal, but our opinion is that publishers and scientists have
yet to fully understand the practical specifications associated with the problem. Should the
watermarks be visible or invisible? What constitutes invisibility? How difficult should it be to
remove watermarks from images? How might one characterize "good-enough watermarking" for
different commercial and non-commercial applications? What constitutes a "reasonable" level of
photo-editing? Or, of degradation? Can the original image be required for decoding? Is transferal
of the watermark from the electronic medium to the printed medium important? How are the
watermarks to be policed?
As scientists propose solutions and publishers experiment with them and debate their merits,
some methods of watermarking will emerge as useful and be widely used. When that happens,
there will also be the emergence of external agencies for monitoring electronic copyright
infringement (much the same as there are agencies for music and print copyright management).
In the meantime, the challenge is for the scientists to develop ever more invisible, decodable and
permanent watermarking methods, and perhaps to meet even more specifications as they are
demanded.

16