Digital signature of color images using amplitude modulation

Watermarking techniques, also referred to as digital signature, sign images by introducing changes that are imperceptible to the human eye but easily recoverable by a computer program. Generally, the signature is a number which identifies the owner of the image. The locations in the image where the signature is embedded are determined by a secret key. Doing so prevents possible pirates from easily removing the signature. Furthermore, it should be possible to retrieve the signature from an altered image. Possible alternations of signed images include blurring, compression and geometrical transformations such as rotation and translation. These alterations are referred to as attacks. A new method based on amplitude modulation is presented. Single signature bits are multiply embedded by modifying pixel values in the blue channel. These modifications are either additive or subtractive, depending on the value of the bit, and proportional to the luminance. This new method has shown to be resistant to both classical attacks, such as filtering, and geometrical attacks. Moreover, the signature can be extracted without the original image.