A Method for Deciding Quantization Steps in QIM Watermarking Schemes

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a method for enlarging quantization steps of a QIM watermarking scheme which determines the perceptual quality and robustness of the watermarked images. In general, increasing the quantization steps leads to good robustness but poor perceptual quality of watermarked images and vice versa. However, if we choose the quantization steps considering the expected quantization results as well as the original images, we can increase both robustness and perceptual quality of the watermarked images.