This paper proposes a novel method for content-based watermarking based on feature points of an image. At each feature point, watermark is embedded after affine normalization according to the local characteristic scale and orientation. The characteristic scale is the scale at which the normalized scale-space representation of an image attains a maximum value, and the characteristic orientation is the angle of the principal axis of an image. By binding watermarking with the local characteristics of an image, resilience against affine transformations can be obtained. Experimental results show that the proposed method is robust against various image processing steps including affine transformations, cropping, filtering and JPEG compression.
Jin S. Seo, Chang D. Yoo