Unseen Visible Watermarking: A Novel Methodology for Auxiliary Information Delivery via Visual Contents

Additional Information Delivery to Image Content via Improved Unseen–Visible Watermarking

“…However, in a real-life scenario, the watermarks are used to deliver auxiliary information, such as banknotes, official documents, etc., where the watermarked document delivers information about its authenticity when its visualization is enhanced, seeing it against light. In this context, several watermarking algorithms have been proposed to deliver auxiliary information about the visual content of images [6][7][8][9][10][11]; opening with this target a new research field that is denoted as invisible-visible watermarking, which can be divided according to the exhibition stage in unseen-visible watermarking (UVW) [6][7][8], and imperceptible-visible watermarking (IVW) [9,11]. The main idea of invisible-visible watermarking algorithms applied to digital color images is based on the digital reproduction of the real-life scenario of the watermarks, that in addition to providing copyright and intellectual property protection, are capable of delivering information to the end-users via owner logotype, 2D barcode or quick response (QR) codes [12].…”

“…The main idea of invisible-visible watermarking algorithms applied to digital color images is based on the digital reproduction of the real-life scenario of the watermarks, that in addition to providing copyright and intellectual property protection, are capable of delivering information to the end-users via owner logotype, 2D barcode or quick response (QR) codes [12]. To make this possible, these algorithms are focused on the observation of how some digital image information that is invisible to the naked eyes becomes visible after applying some image enhancement operations such as Gamma Correction Function (GCF) [6][7][8]13], Histogram Modulation (HM) [9] or Binarization Function (BF) [10,11].…”

“…In contrast with the IVW algorithms, the embedding and the exhibition stages of UVW algorithms work independently of each other. In a general scenario, the entity who wants to provide additional information about the visual content embeds in an imperceptible manner a logotype, 2D barcode or QR code, into the image or video; after the transmission, when the end-user requires extra information about the visual content, he/she executes an exhibition stage, taking advantage of the equipped functions into the display devices, such as GCF [6][7][8]13], and contrast or brightness [14].…”

“…Additionally, it is not limited to extend the applicability to information security tasks such as medical imaging [15,16], deepfake prevention [17], 3D-video protection [18], face recognition authentication [19] and other related fields [20]. However, to obtain better results in all those applications, several drawbacks of the UVW algorithms must be improved: first, the algorithms only require large image regions with low intensity [6][7][8]14] second, embedding strategies increase histogram distortion and visual degradation of the watermarked image, impacting the legibility of the visual content and the watermark imperceptibility. To improve UVW algorithms in the context of imperceptibility and visibility of the watermark pattern, this paper proposes a strategy that is distinguished by three main goals:…”

“…To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, the experimental results are compared with previously reported algorithms [6][7][8], showing that the proposal can be implemented efficiently in images with different characteristics and that the histogram distortion and visual degradation of the watermarked image are reduced.…”