Talk:Digital watermarking

So comment
What the heck is water marking and why do people do it? It is so confusing and most people do not know how to do it... and blah blah blah

This page in the form of a couple of days ago is totally inadequate. It lacked (1) a proper definition of the main topic of this page, (2) a generally accepted classification, and (3) a statement of the most relevant results (e.g. Costa). Moreover, its references were mostly obscure articles. A major re-edit is needed (started). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drkbts (talk • contribs) 05:30, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

hi, I added a lot of content but I need some help to make the look nicer (formating support). f Any comments? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Andreas.lang (talk • contribs) 11:35, 30 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your contribution. A lot of content has been added.  It is highly mathematical in nature, as opposed to encyclopedic.     I did not see any references added, so the recent additions have the appearance of  original research.  Many of the additions are definitions, encyclopedic content should have some meaningful results.    In my opinion, a good addition would be a description of major embedding algorithms (spread spectrum, QIM, etc.), comments are performance of different schemes, etc.      Comfortably Paranoid (talk) 11:44, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

hi again, yes, I added a lot of definitions, because I figured out, that many definitions exists, which are not really useable. the added references (ecrypt, for example) provides more and detailed information. regarding your other comment: what is the goal of this page: digital watermarking in general or specific algorithms? I added the fundamental definitions and we could enhance this article with exemplary selected digital watermarking schemes. which have a specific for e.g. robustness, transparency etc. what do you mean should or could be our next step? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Andreas.lang (talk • contribs) 11:09, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Watermarking vs Steganography
Watermarking is not a form of steganography. mahendra kumar dewangan

Watermarking has the objective to embed data in a document in a way, so that it: In general it is not necessary that the watermark can not be detected. In contrary the goal of steganography is to hide data undetectable in a document.
 * is hard to remove
 * cannot be forged by someone else

When the watermark is hard to detect and the retrieval method is kept secret, then it qualifies as stegnanography. Embedding a watermark in copies of a movie so that the source of illegal copies can be determined is often stegnanographic. --76.247.183.128 (talk) 15:03, 25 February 2010 (UTC)


 * It is also used for the purposes of Digital Rights Managment. Uniquely identifiable data is put into a file to implement DRM. Wageslave 20:24, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

-- LicklStefan 09:24, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There are many ways to make the spatial watermarking robust to cropping or translation. In fact, there are really no differences between adding something in the frequency domain over adding something in the space domain.


 * Digital watermarking is a form of steganography, because it should be undetectable. If it is detectable without keys, then it is removable by a malicious attacker, and is therefore useless cojoco (talk) 03:50, 1 December 2008 (UTC) I think it depends upon the intended use. If the watermark is intended to carry descriptive information that can be retrieved by an end user, then it may be acceptable for it to be vulnerable to attack. Watermarks can be useful even if they are easily attacked. I have tried to reword the intro to cover the comments above. --76.247.183.128 (talk) 15:03, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

remove line about picture above
There is no picture referance should be removed or picture added. 'DDA.Bold text'' == Headline text == ''' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.212.140.70 (talk) 09:24, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia
Are images with digital watermarking generally not allowed on Wikipedia? Shawnc 02:10, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
 * If you mean those visible notices, generally they're against Wikipedia style, though maybe they occur in some fair-use images where they mustn't be removed. Phr (talk) 17:11, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * See commons:commons:exif. Arlo James Barnes 22:36, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Additions to history section
All but the first paragraph of the history section seems either misplaced or completely irrelevant--128.154.44.44 13:32, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

The coneption in the article seems somewhat narrow
According to Cox, Miller, Bloom in "Digital Watermarking" applications include broadcast monitoring, owner identification, proof of ownership, transaction tracking, content authentication, copy control and device control. The article only seems to focus on authentication. MatthewKarlsen 17:47, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Page issues
Alright, so.. this page suffers heavily from a number of issues, including direct quotation and single sourcing.

"A simple example of a digital watermark would be a visible "seal" placed over an image to identify the copyright. However the watermark might contain additional information including the identity of the purchaser of a particular copy of the material. According to the human perception, the digital watermarks can be divided into two different types as follows: visible and invisible. Visible watermark is a secondary translucent overlaid into the primary image as shown in the figure." is taken from, page 4. The spacing here (you may need to edit this page) is identical to what would happen if you copied it directly from the PDF.

"There are various spatial and frequency domain techniques used for adding watermarks to and removing them from signals. Purely spatial techniques are not robust to some attacks to the signal like cropping and zooming, whereas most frequency domain techniques and mixed-domain techniques are quite robust to such attacks." - This was stolen directly from, page 17. Kiranmayi Penumarthi is not quoted on this page.

"Another application is to protect digital media by fingerprinting each copy with the purchaser's information. If the purchaser makes illegitimate copies, these will contain his name.  Fingerprints are an extension to watermarking principle and can be both visible and invisible." is from, page 7.

I'm going to ask around for some help in how to solve this problem, as I don't quite have the time or effort to put into this. &mdash;  Hello Annyong  [ t &#183; c ] 13:40, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Since they copyvios have been integrated into the text, it's nearly impossible to remove them so I've reduced it to what seems to be non-copyvio material. If someone can find a good version in the history to revert back to, that would work also. John Reaves 22:17, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If the telltale signs of this copyvio are so hard to remove, perhaps we could argue that it is fair use to keep them in as the perfect example of digital watermarking! Certes (talk) 00:50, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

On a less frivolous note, this page has become a magnet for linkspam. I've just removed three specimens but I doubt they'll be the last. Certes (talk) 23:16, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Undefined terms
"Cover object" is not defined. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.190.109.41 (talk) 06:21, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Why is there zero information about anything practical in this article?
There doesn't appear to be any knowledge in this article that relates to the real world in any way.

Why is it not written in normal English?

Why no mention of Digimarc, the largest corporation selling watermark software?

Why no mention of any practical or genuine watermarking methods whatsoever?

Why no mention of unique issues associate with Audio, Still image and Video signals?

Why is everything written in Academic double-speak: for example, why does a scoring scheme have to exist on a unit interval [0,1], for goodness sakes? How about a score between 0 and 1 instead?

Why no mention of practical perception issues, such as chromatic resolution, frequency perceptions, perceptual masking?

cojoco (talk) 03:45, 1 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Why not contribute some improvements, instead of just whining? You seem to know what should be here ... why not add it yourself?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.17.56.5 (talk) 18:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to merge with Watermark (data file)
Someone has suggested merging this article into Watermark (data file). I think that this is a bad idea, and have started a discussion on Talk: Watermark (data file). cojoco (talk) 21:29, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Lost cause?
Digital watermarking seems to be dead, I mean Bittorrent is king, Rapidshare is king and no one cares a damn about tracking thieves. It looks like watermarks are impossible to preserve accross major codec transformations and the total anarchy of a plethora of present-day video and audio codecs (AC3, AAC, MP3, xvid, h263, h264, flv, mkv, avi, mov, rm*) makes it impossible to invisibly watermark a DVD movie, because you just can't know what compressed format will be made of it and uploaded to P2P. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.131.135.138 (talk) 21:28, 10 October 2009 (UTC)


 * While frivolous sounding, the above comment actually raises an important point. What have been the actual effects of digital watermarking on society? Is digital watermarking "dead"?


 * Not dead. It's reasonably trivial to make changes that will survive codec transfer, resolution, and even cam-recording, by encoding stuff in the frame timings, etc. Simplistically, if Alice's copy of the movie has the first fade-cut extended by five frames, Bob's has it shortened by five frames, then you can identify the leaked copy so long as you are using a codec which doesn't randomly drop or gain a sixth of a second during fade-cuts. An attacker could break this by gaining access to, and comparing, both copies, but that requires two leaks. Less trivial systems require more copies of the video to break.97.105.71.154 (talk) 17:23, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Difficult to remove?
Since when does a digital watermark have to be "difficult to remove"? Consider Amazon MP3's "watermarking" which is implemented as a digitally signed header:

"The record company that supplies this song or album requires all companies that sell its downloadable music to include identifiers with the downloads. Embedded in the metadata of each purchased MP3 from this record company are a random number Amazon assigns to your order, the Amazon store name, the purchase date and time, codes that identify the album and song (the UPC and ISRC), Amazon's digital signature, and an identifier that can be used to determine whether the audio has been modified. In addition, Amazon inserts the first part of the email address associated with your Amazon.com account, so that you know these files are unique to you. Songs that include these identifiers are marked on their product detail page on Amazon.com.  These identifiers do not affect the playback experience in any way."

-- samj in out 13:15, 2 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Not every embedded identifier is a watermark. For example, metadata, cookies, tags, checksums, and filenames are simply ways to convey information without any expectation of robustly surviving an attack. This differentiation should probably be clarified in the article. Is it a common misperception that "watermarks" and "tags" are synonymous? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.18.238.89 (talk) 04:59, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

What is digital in digital watermarking?
What exactly is the digital part in digital watermarking? At this point I encounter a problem: It is said that half-transparent/semi-opaque overlays also are digital watermarks (visible ones, though, but don't get confused by that ;-) ), for example in the Wikipedia article I'm currently discussing. That these overlays are a problem for the very definition of digital watermarks, can be derived by the following TV-related example: Neither are logo-superimposed carriers always digital (think of TV images from pre-digital eras), nor are the logos itself digital. Even the embedding process cannot be that digital, since it existed in those pre-digital days. The detection/reading part is not digital at all, since YOU would have done it with your analog eyes. Now: What about these so-called visible digital watermarks is digital? Could it be that all the scientists that work in that field and think that a digital watermark is by definition imperceptible (i.e. invisible for pictures and video), are right? What do you think? Let's discuss. -- Gut informiert (talk) 15:20, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The carrier? I don't think so. It's right: Most digital watermarks are applied to digital media like pictures, videos or audio data, but that's not the whole story. For example: In every Euro banknote (a very analog thing) is a digital watermark by Digimarc embedded (cf. EURion constellation), which survives even a DA-AD conversion. Further: On every sheet a color printer or photocopier prints, a digital watermark is applied that enables certain people to determine the exact machine by which the printing was done. Paper sheets - a very analog thing, to me at least.
 * The watermark itself? Here, the same reasoning can be applied: Since a digital watermark can exist outside of the digital domain, it cannot be that digital, can it?
 * The last remaining thing is the process, the procedure of applying and detecting/reading of a digital watermark. This step is done with aid of a computer. I think, this could be the core part of the labeling with the tag "digital".


 * you say that "all the scientists that work in that field [...] think that a digital watermark is by definition imperceptible". is that really the case?
 * "Digital watermarkig is defined as a process of embedding data (watermark) into a multimedia object to help to protect the owner's right to that object. The embedded data (watermark) may be either visible or invisible." (R. Anisha, S. Panimalar and M. Gomathi: An Efficient Visible Watermarking for Copyright Protection Using Discrete Wavelet Transform )
 * "Digital watermarking has been researched extensively due to its potential use for data security and copyright protection. Much of the literature has focused on developing invisible watermarking algorithms. However, not much has been done on visible watermarking." (Yongjian Hu, Jiwu Huang, Sam Kwong and Y. K. Chan: Image Fusion Based Visible Watermarking Using Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet Transform )
 * "Digital watermarking techniques have been developed to protect the intellectual property. A digital watermarking system is basically judged based on two characteristics: security robustness and image quality. In order to obtain a robust visible watermarking in practice, [...]" (Min-Jen Tsai and Jung Liu: A game-theoretic architecture for visible watermarking system of ACOCOA (adaptive content and contrast aware) technique ) --MarioS (talk) 16:35, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

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Additional application for reversible data hiding section
Hey all, currently, there is only 1 application (military purpose) for reversible data hiding written in the current version. But, there are actually other useful applications that can be used to reduce the file storage requirement of automatic image enhancement:

In addition to authentication purposes, reversible data hiding has been adopted for automatic image enhancement applications. The image is automatically enhanced in a way that the original image can be recovered from the enhanced image without any side information. Since the original image is recoverable, only the enhanced image needs to be stored, which results in a reduction in file storage requirement.

Unfortunately, since I am working closely on the topic, I shouldn't publish it. But, feel free to add this information if you think it is helpful.

"Example" images
Do the example images currently used in this article actually use digital watermarks, in the same sense as this article? The captions call attention to visible watermarks, which isn't what the article is talking about. If they actually are related to the article in some way, it's not very clear. Leangle30 (talk) 05:58, 24 June 2022 (UTC)