ABSTRACT
Copyright protection for multimedia objects is an emerging issue in digital signal processing and in present-day data communications. A spatial domain-based novel digital image watermarking technique has been proposed as a copyright protection tool, using some intelligent techniques, e.g. saliency detection and data clustering, to enhance data transparency according to the human visual system. For spatial watermarking schemes, the data hiding capacity can be increased up to a specific level as a maximum. A binary watermark image is typically embedded into a grayscale image. The utilization of some optimization techniques, such as genetic algorithms, differential evolution algorithms could be used for designing a watermarking system in order to obtain the optimum results according to different requirements or purposes. These concepts also suggest the formulation of a universal testing parameter, so that the proficiency of any watermarking schemes can be assessed using a standardized scale.
