ABSTRACT

Copyright protection of images has become a major concern with the rapid expansion of the Internet, which contains millions of freely available images. Digital watermarking has been suggested as a form of copyright protection and is becoming a major player not only for use in images but also in the latest technology such as DVD. This project investigates the following relevant concepts and terminology: History of watermarks and how they come about in digital form, the properties of a watermarking system, the applications and what the watermark is used for, the requirements, and also the watermarking technique use in this project, with the main focus being on watermarking in the Frequency domain. The watermarking technique, which is based on the discrete cosine transform, is tested using two image file formats and the results are analyzed. A program is created that implements the technique that gave the best result, in the watermarking system for the use of digital images. This project work is therefore aimed at designing a program which will be used to insert unobtrusive content into the digital image for the purpose of image copyright protection.