A robust HDR images watermarking method using artificial bee colony algorithm

Abstract In this paper, a robust watermarking method for High Dynamic Range Images (HDRIs) is presented. In order to find the best block for watermark insertion, Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) is employed. After selection of the best block, the insertion procedure inserts binary marks in the selected first level approximation sub-band of Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) in each selected block. In the extraction process, an extraction method is applied to obtain and detect the hidden marks. Several experiments have been done to show imperceptibility and robustness of the proposed algorithm on a dataset of 12 HDR images. The results have shown the superiority of the proposed algorithm to some state of the art methods.