Moiré-Watermark: Robust Watermarking Against Screen-Shooting Using Moiré Patterns

The prevalence of digital content leakage via screen capture highlights the urgent need for robust watermarking solutions capable of withstanding cross-media transmission. Current approaches primarily focus on developing watermarking techniques resilient to screen-shooting distortions, where distinguishing the watermark signal from these distortions is paramount. In contrast, our study addresses an inverse problem by investigating the generation patterns of noise during screen-shooting and considering them as feasible representations of watermark signals. Leveraging Moiré patterns as one of the distortion signals naturally generated by the interaction between electronic screens and camera sensors, we propose Moiré-watermark, presenting watermark information encoded into meticulously crafted Moiré patterns within images. To enhance the naturalness of Moiré-watermark amidst the irregularities of screen-shooting Moiré patterns, we encode watermark signals using gratings at different angles. A corresponding angle-based decoding method facilitates effective blind extraction of watermarks. Comprehensive experimental evaluations under diverse conditions of distance, angle, lighting, and across various capturing and display devices, alongside comparisons with existing methods, validate the superior performance of Moiré-watermark.