A robust color image watermarking technique using modified Imperialist Competitive Algorithm

In this paper, a novel robust watermarking technique using Imperialistic Competition Algorithm (ICA) in the spatial domain is proposed to protect the intellectual property rights of color images. The proposed method tries to insert the watermark in the blocks which are selected by Modified ICA. In this method, ICA has been customized for watermarking. The color band for watermark insertion is selected based on color dynamic range in each block. Besides, in the procedure of selecting blocks for watermark insertion and extraction, ensuring higher fidelity and robustness and resilience to several possible image attacks have been considered. The experimental results showed that the proposed method performance created watermarked images with better PSNRs and more robustness versus several attacks such as additive noise and blurring in compare to related works. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.