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International Journal on Communications (IJC) Volume 3, 2014

A Robust Color Image Watermarking Based

on SVD and DWT
Li ZHANG*, Jia Wei XIAO, Jing Yun LUO
Institute of Information Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen Guangdong 518060, China
*

wzhangli@szu.edu.cn; jiaweixiao@szu.edu.cn; jingyunluo@szu.edu.cn

Abstract
A robust color image watermarking based on DWT SVD
(Singular value decomposition) is proposed. Firstly, color
image is transformed to YUV from RGB spatial domain.
Luminance component Y is performed DWT and then
singular value decomposition is applied to obtain singular
values. Arnold transform and DWT are performed for the
gray watermarks. Watermark is embedded into singular
values, which are all from frequency bands of the last two
layers. Watermark can be extracted from all attack images in
the stirmark benchmark. The robustness can be reflected by
experimental results in this algorithm.
Keywords
Digital Watermarking; SVD; DWT

Introduction
Electronic products are more and more important in
modern society. Dissemination and replication of
digital products are getting easier. More and more
people infringe electronic products in order to resist
different kinds of infringements and protect the
electronic products. Digital watermarking technology
emerges as the times requiring. Digital watermark is a
kind of copyright protection information and owners
can read it out while unauthorized users can not easily
remove it. Invisibility and robustness should be
considered in valid watermarking algorithm.
Compromises between invisibility and robustness are
needed to get better results in embedding process.
Feng Shi split low-frequency part of the original image
into 44 data blocks, decomposed the singular value of
each piece and calculated the largest singular value of
each block. Low frequency information of watermark
was embedded into these singular values. But it is not
very robust to rotation attack according to
experimental results. Kapre Bhagyashri S selected full
band frequency to hide watermark in the three
channel of YUV color space. In each level of
decomposition, image was decomposed into four
bands of frequencies and SVD was performed.
Watermark was hidden in the singular values. Then

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ISVD and IDWT were applied to get watermarked

image. However, watermark can not be extracted
when strength of noise attack is higher.
In this paper, a new watermarking algorithm that
embeds a gray watermark into the color image is
proposed based on SVD and DWT. Watermark is
embedded in luminance component Y. All frequency
coefficients of watermark are embedded into singular
values of frequency bands, which are all from last two
layers of Y. Experimental results demonstrate that the
proposed watermarking has good robustness against
attacks produced by stirmark benchmark.
This paper is organized as follows: In section 2 the
YUV color model is introduced. In section 3 digital
watermark embedding and extracting algorithm are
presented in detail. Experimental results of stirmark
benchmark are described in section 4. Finally, in
section 5 the conclusion is given.
Background
Color space is a three-dimensional coordinate system
whose each color is indicated by a dot. Color image is
transformed to YUV from RGB spatial domain.
Conversions between RGB and YUV are as follows:

Y 0.299 R 0.587G 0.114 B

U 0.16874 R 0.33126G 0.5B 128

V 0.5R 0.41869G 0.08131B 128

(1)

R Y 1.402(V 128)

G Y 0.34414(U 128) 0.71414(V 128)

B Y 1.772(U 128)

(2)

Where, Y represents luminance component. U and V

mean that chrominance signal.
Proposed Watermarking Algorithm
In this section, the proposed watermarking algorithm
including embedding and extracting process will be
described in detail.

International Journal on Communications (IJC) Volume 3, 2014

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Watermark Embedding Process

Experiment Results

The steps of watermark embedding can be described

as follows:

In the experiments, original cover image is a color lena

with size 512512. Visual gray watermark is with size
6464 shown in Fig.2. Watermarked image is shown in
Fig.3c. Normalized Correlation (NC) is used to
measure similarity between original and extracted
watermark. PSNR (peak signal-to-noise ratio) between
original image and watermarked image is computed.
NC of extracted and original watermark is 0.9998.
PSNR of original and watermarked image is 36.0661.

Step1. Color image is transformed to YUV from RGB

spatial domain to obtain the luminance component Y.
Step2. DWT is performed for Y and then SVD is
applied to obtain these orthogonal matrixes u1 and v1
and singular values d1.
Step3. Arnold transformation and DWT are performed
for watermark. All sub bands of watermark are
embedded into one dimensional singular value
vectors, which are all from frequency bands of the last
two layers. SVD is performed to obtain these
orthogonal matrixes u2, v2 and singular values d2.
These singular values are applied in the following
formula: A1=u1*d2*v1 to get the embedded
watermark frequency coefficients.

(a)

Original image

(b)Extracted watermark

(d)Original watermark

(c) Watermarked image

Step4.IDWT is used to get the gray watermarked

image. YUV is converted into RGB color spaces to
obtain color watermarked image.

FIG 2 (a) ORIGNAL IMAGE(c) WATERMARKED IMAGE (b)

EXTRACTED WATERMARK (d) ORIGINAL WATERMARK

Robust Against Noise Attacks

Watermark Extracting Scheme
Watermark can be extracted blindly by the reverse
calculation of watermark embedding.
Step1. Color watermarked image is transformed to
YUV from RGB spatial domain to obtain luminance
component Y.DWT is performed for Y to obtain all
frequency bands of the last two layers. SVD is applied
for these sub bands to obtain singular values.

Random dither noise attacks are from StirMark

benchmark. Even though watermarked image has
been accounted by noise for forty percent, watermark
can also be extracted and shown in Fig.3.

Attack watermarked
image
Extracted watermark

Step2. These orthogonal matrixes u2 and v2, which are

from the third step of the embedded process, with the
singular values are applied to ISVD. The embedded
watermark singular values d are got and key1 are
loaded, then all sub bands of watermark are obtained.
Step3.IDWT is applied for these sub bands to get the
watermark.
Watermar
k

FIG 3 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS OF NOISE 40%

DWT

Watermark
embed

Arnold transform
Color image

RGB to YUV

DWT

SVD
Color watermarked image

FIG1. PROCESS OF WATERMRKING EMBEDDING

TABLE1EXPERIMENTAL DATA OF NOISE ATTACK

Table1 shows experimental data of NC and PSNR

under different intensity of noise attacks. When
intensity of noise attack is from 20% to 100%, NC is
from 0.9306 to 0.8477. So it is robust to noise attack.

Parameter
20%
40%

PSNR
15.3425
13.8439

NC
0.9306
0.8806

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www.seipub.org/ijc

60%
100%

International Journal on Communications (IJC) Volume 3, 2014

13.3653
12.9943

0.8627
0.8477

Attack watermarked image

Extracted watermark

Robust Against Geometric Attacks

Geometric attacks can be defined as all kinds of global
or local affine, projective transformations and other
attacks applied for watermarked image.
Geometric attacks include cutting, rotation, cropping,
resize, small random distortion, rotation and cutting.
Watermarked image has been cut 3 blocks with size
128128, and extracted watermark is shown in Fig.4.
Fig.5 shows that extracted watermark is visible,
though watermarked image has been cropped in half.
Attack watermarked image
Extracted watermark

FIG 4 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS OF CUTTING

Attack

watermarked image
Extracted watermark

FIG 7 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS OF SMALL RANDOM

DISTORTION

Six types of geometric attacks are applied for

watermarked image to evaluate the robustness of
proposed scheme. Experimental data of table2
illustrate that strong robustness against geometric
attacks effectively.
TABLE2 EXPERIMENTAL DATA OF GEOMETRIC ATTACKS

Attacks
Cutting 1/4 corner
Cutting 1/2cross corner&1/4 center
Cropping 25
Cropping 75
Rotation 1 degree
Rotation 30 degree
Rotation15&Cutting1/4 center
Rotation45&Cutting1/4 center
Resize 40*40
Resize 60*60
Random distortion 0.95
Random distortion 1.05

PSNR
16.8372
12.2147
15.7301
17.4620
21.6937
12.7488
12.5022
11.8980
24.2437
25.8556
19.7225
19.3920

NC
0.9982
0.9759
0.9282
0.9795
0.9855
0.9924
0.9833
0.9839
0.9624
0.9788
0.9856
0.9906

Robust Against JPEG Compression Attacks

FIG 5 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS OF CROPPING 50
Attack

watermarked image
Extracted watermark

JPEG compression attack with quality factor 30 is used

for watermarked image. Extracted watermark is
hardly affected by this attack.
When quality factors of JPEG compression attacks
change, experimental data of NC and PSNR are
different shown in table3. No matter how quality
factor is changed, NC is similarly high.
TABLE3 EXPERIMENTAL DATA OF JPEG COMPRESSION ATTACK

FIG 6 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS OF 30ROTATION & 1/4

CENTER CUTTING

Watermarked image has been rotated by 30 degrees

and cut 1/4 from the center. Extracted watermark is
shown in Fig.6.
Small random distortion attack with parameter 1.1 is
applied for Watermarked image. Small random
distortion is defined as partial shifts, scaling and
rotation attacks used for pixels of watermarked image
in the absence of significant visual distortion.

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parameter
15
30
50
80
100

PSNR
28.5168
28.9367
29.0051
29.4969
29.5000

NC
0.9984
0.9993
0.9998
0.9997
0.9997

Robust Against Other Kinds of Attacks

Watermarked image has been rotated by 45 degrees
and cut 1/4 from the center, attack of salt &pepper
noise is also applied.

International Journal on Communications (IJC) Volume 3, 2014

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industry to develop special fund (C201005250085A,

JCYJ20130329105356543).

Attack watermarked image

Extracted watermark

REFERENCES

Chen-qun Yin, Li Li, An-qiang Lv and Li Qu, Color Image

Watermarking

Algorithm

Based

on

DWT-SVD,

Proceeding of the IEEE International Conference on

FIG 9 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS OF 45ROTATION & SALT
&PEPPER NOISE &1/4 CENTER CUTTING ATTACK

In the invariant condition of rotating angle and

intensity of noise, NC and PSNR under different
cutting parts of watermarked image are shown in the
following table. Extracted watermark is similar to
original watermark according to NC values.
TABLE4 EXPERIMENTAL DATA OF ROTATION &SALT &PEPPER NOISE

&CUTTING ATTACK
parameter
Rotation45&Salt&Pepper0.3&Cutting1/
4corner
Rotation45&Salt&Pepper0.3&Cutting1/
4 center
Rotation45&Salt&Pepper0.3&Cutting1/
2cross corner

Automation and Logistics, August 18-21,2007,Jinan,

China, pp.2607~2611.
Feng Shi, Yongge Shi, Lin Lai, Optimization on digital
watermarking algorithm based on SVD-DWT, IEEE,
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Ms.Kapre Bhagyashri S, Mrs.Joshi M.Y, All Frequency Band
DWT-SVD Robust Watermarking Technique for Color
Images in YUV Color Space, IEEE, 2011, pp.295~299.

PSNR

NC

11.2958

0.9785

11.3131

0.9940

11.0977

0.9616

Conclusions
In this paper, a robust color image watermarking
based on DWTSVD is proposed, which resists image
processing attacks, such as JPEG compression, noise,
median filter, cropping, rotation, affine transform,
random distortion and so on. Experimental results
demonstrate that the proposed watermarking has a
good robust against attacks produced by stirmark
benchmark, especially against the geometric attacks.
For example, experimental results of rotation and
cutting attack show that NC is high. In the future, the
enhancement of robustness against noise attack will be
our main research fields.

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Chandra, S.Srivastava, Wavelet based robust digital
watermarking

technique

reverse

additive

algorithm, IEEE, 2009, pp.241~244.

Tang Zhenhao, Yong shihua, Ma Xiaohu, An algorithm of
digital watermarking based on DWT nad SVD,
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September 2009,pp.7208~7210.
WANG Dao-Shun LIANG Jing-Hong DAI Yi-Qi LUO Song
QI Dong-Xu, Evaluation of the Validity of Image
Watermarking, Chinese Journal Of Computers, Vol.26
No.7 July 2003,pp.779~788.
Weimin Yang, Xiaoning Zhao, A digital Watermarking
algorithm using singular value decomposition in wavelet
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Xiugui Yuan, Zhen Zhou, A novel robust watermarking
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

using

Vol.33,

No.1,

2011,

pp.112~115.

This work is partly supported by Shenzhen Internet

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