A color image watermarking algorithm resistant to print-scan

Print-scan resilient data hiding finds important applications in image copyright protection. This paper proposes a novel algorithm which combines the methods of image complexity and discrete Fourier transform (DFT). Based on appropriate block partition, we can compute the local image complexity of the block, which is determined whether to embed watermark in this block. The red component of the block is transformed with DFT and a watermark is embedded in the mid-frequency of DFT coefficients. The hidden data can be extracted without using the original image to verify the copyright of the reproduced image. Experiment results suggest that the proposed method is robust after high-quality printing and scanning.