Framework for watermark robustness adjustment using image depth map

Ease of access to digital multimedia content in recent years has many advantages but one disadvantage is the breach of copyright. Copyright protection is now a great concern which is usually answered by digital watermarking. Generally each proposed method for image watermarking in spatial and frequency domains has improved one of the criteria related to imperceptibility (or fidelity) and robustness of image. Areas in an image that are perceived closer to the viewer are generally considered as points of interest. Hence, in this research we propose a new framework that uses the depth map as a tool for adaptivity to improve both the robustness of image against image processing and also boosts the quality of watermarked image. The quality is preserved in areas that are more important to us based on human visual system. Embedding of the watermark is performed in DCT coefficients of maximum singular values of image blocks. Analysis of the experimental results of the proposed method shows improvements in the perceptual quality of the watermarked image. Also increase in the robustness of the watermarked imaged against image processing attacks such as JPEG, AWGN, and median filter is achieved.