Adaptive Control of Embedding Strength in Image Watermarking using Neural Networks

Digital image watermarking has been widely used in different applications such as copyright protection of digital media, such as audio, image, and video files. Two opposing criteria of robustness and transparency are the goals of watermarking methods. In this paper, we propose a framework for determining the appropriate embedding strength factor. The framework can use most DWT and DCT based blind watermarking approaches. We use Mask R-CNN on the COCO dataset to find a good strength factor for each sub-block. Experiments show that this method is robust against different attacks and has good transparency.

Robustness and Imperceptibility Enhancement in Watermarked Images by Color Transformation

One of the effective methods for the preservation of copyright ownership of digital media is watermarking. Different watermarking techniques try to set a tradeoff between robustness and transparency of the process. In this research work, we have used color space conversion and frequency transform to achieve high robustness and transparency. Due to the distribution of image information in the RGB domain, we use the YUV color space, which concentrates the visual information in the Y channel. Embedding of the watermark is performed in the DCT coefficients of the specific wavelet subbands. Experimental results show high transparency and robustness of the proposed method.

Artistic Instance-Aware Image Filtering by Convolutional Neural Networks

In the recent years, public use of artistic effects for editing and beautifying images has encouraged researchers to look for new approaches to this task. Most of the existing methods apply artistic effects to the whole image. Exploitation of neural network vision technologies like object detection and semantic segmentation could be a new viewpoint in this area. In this paper, we utilize an instance segmentation neural network to obtain a class mask for separately filtering the background and foreground of an image. We implement a top prior-mask selection to let us select an object class for filtering purpose. Different artistic effects are used in the filtering process to meet the requirements of a vast variety of users. Also, our method is flexible enough to allow the addition of new filters. We use pre-trained Mask R-CNN instance segmentation on the COCO dataset as the segmentation network. Experimental results on the use of different filters are performed. System's output results show that this novel approach can create satisfying artistic images with fast operation and simple interface.