Media pattern exhibition mechanism via mobile devices

•Conceal an imperceptible but recognizable pattern on the media captured with mobile devices.•Satisfy the essentials of both visible and invisible watermarking techniques.•Promote significant property sharing and identification for mobile applications.•Guarantee the PSNR of the marked media versus the original media to be above 50–70 dB.

This paper describes a new methodology of pattern exhibition for digital media that can conceal an imperceptible but recognizable watermark on the media captured with mobile devices. From the human perception, the imperceptible watermark of marked media can preserve the fidelity and readability of the image’s content. With the designed, window-based histogram operation, the embedded pattern of the marked media can be exhibited and recognized visually. That is, the designed mechanism can satisfy the essentials of both visible and invisible watermarking techniques to promote significant pattern sharing and identification for mobile applications. Simulations demonstrate that the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of the marked image is superior (around 50–70 dB) to many of the existing watermarking algorithms. The process is of low computational complexity, efficient and can be applied in the real world via mobile devices via inner histogram operation.