An image copyright protection scheme by encrypting secret data with the host image

In this paper, a zero-watermarking based copyright protection scheme is proposed. The secret watermark image is not embedded in the host image rather it is encrypted with the host image. The proposed scheme is making use of discrete cosine transform and singular value decomposition to extract robust features of the host image. Further the selected robust features are used to encrypt the secret image. The secret image is encrypted with the host image by generating two shares namely master share and ownership share. The master share is generated by differential classification of features extracted. The ownership share is generated with the help of master share and the secret image. The two shares separately don't give any clue of the secret image but when stacked together the encrypted secret image is revealed. Experimental study is conducted to evaluate the robustness of the algorithm against various signal processing and geometrical attacks.