Digital watermarking algorithm research of color images based on quaternion Fourier transform

A watermarking algorithm of color images based on the quaternion Fourier Transform (QFFT) and improved quantization index algorithm (QIM) is proposed in this paper. The original image is transformed by QFFT, the watermark image is processed by compression and quantization coding, and then the processed watermark image is embedded into the components of the transformed original image. It achieves embedding and blind extraction of the watermark image. The experimental results show that the watermarking algorithm based on the improved QIM algorithm with distortion compensation achieves a good tradeoff between invisibility and robustness, and better robustness for the attacks of Gaussian noises, salt and pepper noises, JPEG compression, cropping, filtering and image enhancement than the traditional QIM algorithm.