Performance analysis of SMRT-based color image watermarking in different color spaces

Abstract

ABSTRACT Watermarking is a generic strategy for overcoming numerous issues associated with multimedia security and digital rights management. The color image digital watermarking has not been given considerable attention, and there exists many applications that require them for copyright protection. An image-watermarking scheme based on Sequency based MRT (SMRT) for color image is proposed in this paper to achieve this goal. Choosing a color space for watermarking has always been a big question, as there are a number of color spaces. Primary objective is to find a better color space under the same method from among the frequently used color spaces. In the embedding phase, grayscale image watermark is embedded in the SMRT of R component of the cover image. Scaling factor is varied from 0.01 to 0.5 for evaluating performance of the methodology using PSNR, MSE, SSIM, IEM and NC. Performance of color image watermarking technique using SMRT in nine color spaces is analyzed. It is observed that embedding watermark in Cb channel of YCbCr color space is more imperceptible and robust compared to other color spaces considered. Simulation results show significant improvement in terms of imperceptibility. The robustness is high against GN attack as compared to other attacks.