Tabu searching for Watermarking Robust Against Compression and Cropping

This paper presents a method of digital image watermarking that is robust against compression and cropping based on tabu search for finding the region of interest image that usually contains high level of information. Embed watermark in region of interest image means better changes of surviving against compression and cropping. Process time can be saved by selecting of region of interest image and embedding watermark in spatial domain. We use tabu search for finding region of interest. Wavelet transform is proved to be a suitable transformation for selecting appropriate subband for watermarking against compression and cropping. For security, the watermark bits are randomly permuted before being embedded to the image. Only the owner knew the key randomization which is implemented by convolution code. The experimental results confirm the validity of the proposed strategy