Non-blind RGB image watermarking technique using 2-level discrete wavelet transform and singular value decomposition

Abstract

The main problem in using various watermarking methods to secure digital images is how to optimize the trade-off between robustness watermarked image against the effect of distortion and imperceptibility on watermark insertion. This research proposes a watermark insertion method to protect copyright in true color (RGB) images by combining Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) algorithms. DWT process will be done as much as 2 levels then selected subband LL2 to inserted watermark by Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) method. Measuring tool in this research using MSE, PSNR, SSI M for imperceptibility and NC quality measurement for robustness measurement. The results show that the proposed scheme can optimize the trade-off between imperceptibility and robustness. Some attacks are used such as Gaussian noise, salt & pepper noise, crop, blur and rotate for watermarked image resilience. The PSNR and SSIM values produced from this method are fairly stable values above 40 dB for PSNR and above 0.99 for SSIM. While the average value of NC resulting from this method is 1.