Colour image watermarking using a visual sub-band decomposition

Image watermarking aims at embedding an invisible mark. Insertion must also ensure future detection and robustness to malevolent attacks. In this article, a perceptual method of colour image watermarking is presented. It is based on an adapted computation of the insertion strength that respects invisibility. For that purpose, both lower and higher level perceptual processes are taken into account. These processes include the sensitivity of the human visual system (HVS) modelled by a visual sub-band decomposition (VSD), the masking effects and the visual attention modelling. Results show the ability of the proposed method to deal with different attacks. Experiences have been conducted on several digitized colour images to compare the pertinence of different antagonist colour spaces when the achromatic component only is watermarked.