Image Watermarking

This chapter describes image watermarking, the most common and widespread category of media files are images. The evolution of the Internet and the ease by which images can be duplicated and distributed has led to the need for effective copyright protection tools and techniques in order to provide a secure way to the producers and the owners of these media files. These techniques are described below with an introduction to information hiding. Various software products have been introduced with an aim to address these growing concerns; some categories are presented here. The fundamental technique which allows an individual to add hidden copyright notices or other verification messages to digital images is called digital image watermarking and constitutes the main part of the chapter. Finally authors provide future trends and directions of image watermarking.