A robust hybrid SVD-based image watermarking scheme for color images

The rapid progress of digital multimedia technologies and communications led to the different challenges such as intellectual property or copyright protection. Digital watermarking is a well-known solution for such issues which does not increase overhead, so it is superior to Digital Signature. However, a major problem with digital image watermarking is its weakness against geometric distortions. This paper presents a robust hybrid SVD-based watermarking scheme for color images. By implementing particle swarm optimization (PSO), the scaling factors are selected automatically and the embedding regions are chosen based on human visual system (HVS) in the proposed scheme; moreover, the capacity is improved through embedding two watermark bits into the each selected embedding block regions, while its transparency is kept high. The experimental and analysis results proved the high robustness and imperceptibility of the proposed scheme.