Invisibility and application functionalities in perceptual watermarking an overview

Digital watermarking consists of hiding subliminal information into digital media content, also called host data. It can be the basis of many applications, including security and media asset management. In this paper we focus on the imperceptibility requirement for image watermarking. We first provide a functional inventory of image watermarking applications and emphasize the dependency between the application purpose and its need for invisibility. Then, we present a global framework common to most existing watermarking systems. It illustrates the methodology followed to translate human vision research into watermarking technology. It suggests future prospects and highlights the need for dedicated inputs from the human vision community.