A novel blind digital watermarking algorithm for embedding color image into color image

A robust and blind watermarking technique for dual color images is proposed in this paper. According to the energy concentrating feature of DCT, the two-level DCT is introduced and used to embed color watermark image into color host image, which is completely different with the traditional DCT. For reducing the redundancy of watermark information, the original color watermark image is compressed by the proposed compression method. After two-level DCT, nine AC coefficients in different positions of each sub-block are selected and quantified to embed watermark information. Moreover, only the extraction rules are used to extract watermark from the watermarked image without resorting to the original host image or watermark image. Experimental results show that the proposed watermarking algorithm can effectively improve the quality of the watermarked image and the robustness of the embedded watermark against various attacks.