In this era of digital, we all are in need of content, brands, products, entertainment, utilities, etc. which are digitally available, The content one creates communicates with his/her readers, viewer’s, user’s digitally and persuades them to purchase your products and services over your competition.
Good content is the cornerstone of an effective online marketing campaign and this same thing is with other digital products or brands or many more things as well, everyone needs to stand in a unique way to be identified in this digital crowd and here Digital Watermarking plays a very crucial role to provide every individual, firm, agency, brand or product, etc. To stand in an identical way and their content, product, etc. also stays digitally copyright protected.
What is digital watermarking
Digital watermarking is the method of embedding data into digital multimedia content like image, audio, or video. This is used to verify the credibility of the content or to recognize the identity of the digital content’s owner.
And with all these facilities Digital watermarking takes care of your valuable digital assets that can be susceptible to content theft or unauthorized use. Digital watermarking can be employed for multiple purposes, such as:
- Copyright protection
- Source tracking
- Hidden communication
- Broadcast tracking, such as watermarked videos from global news organizations
There are two types of digital watermarking:
Visible Digital Watermarking: Visible data is embedded as the watermark. This can be a logo or a text that denotes a digital medium’s owner.
Invisible Digital Watermarking: The data embedded is invisible or, in the case of audio content, inaudible.
Digital watermarking process:
The information needs to be embedded in the media. The signal which is embedded in the host signal and the information is called a digital watermark. The process has 3 main parts :
1- Embed – In this part, the digital signal is embedded with the digital watermark.
2- Attack – The moment when the transmitted media is changed, it becomes a threat and is called an attack to the watermarking system.
3- Protection – The detection of the watermark from the noisy signal which might have altered media (JPEG compression, rotation, cropping, and adding noise) is called Protection.
Table 1: Comparison between watermarking techniques
| Characteristics | Spatial Domain | Transfer Domain |
| Computation cost | Low | High |
| Robustness | Fragile | Robust |
| Perceptual quality | High control | Low control |
| Capacity | High(depends on image size) | Low |
| Application | Authentication | Copyright |
Applications :
- Watermarks are used in forensics. Tampered evidence is unacceptable in forensics and Watermarked images are acceptable.
- This is used by brands. The Digital Watermarking is done so that the authority of the digital media is intact.
- Digital Watermarking prevents copying of the data.
- Video editing software use watermarks so that people buy the full version of it.
- It is used in video authentication. News channels often show videos of other agencies which are watermarked. It is also used for ID card security.
- It is used for content management in social media.
Advantages :
It is used in detecting copyright infringements of digital content. Digital Watermarking is a very secure technique. The embedding of watermarks is done by a key. Anyone who wants to remove the watermark can only do this with the knowledge of the keys involved in the embedding process. The embedded version of a file is also digital in nature which can be transmitted and used easily. No change in file format ensures that there is no error or difficulty in using watermarked media.
Disadvantages :
Watermarks that are visible are easily removed or overlayed by other watermarks. There still needs to be the invention of more robust techniques to watermark pictures. The pictures with watermarks are easily resized and the watermarks can be cropped or edited. The owners can remove watermarks easily. This means that if anyone on the owner’s side can easily manipulate the image and alter the watermark.
Enroll in a Digital Watermarking course