Digital Watermarking was the topic of the day on the fifth day of the CSI-MLSU-MATLAB workshop organized by Computer Society of India, Udaipur chapter and University Computer Centre, ML Sukhdia University, Udaipur at Vigyan Bhawan.

Prof. Meeta Paunwala of CKP College of Engineering and Technology, Surat delivered the presentation lecture on the subject.

Digital watermarking is the process of embedding information into digital multimedia content in such a way that the information (called the ‘watermark’) can later be extracted or detected for a variety of purposes including copy right prevention and control.

Development and commercialization of watermarking techniques has become an active and important area of research to help address some of the challenges faced by the rapid proliferation of digital content, resulting in various forms of plagiarism.

In the past, duplicating art work was quite complicated and required a high level of expertise for the counterfeit to look like the original.  However, in the digital world today, this no longer stands true.

Since it is possible for almost anyone to duplicate or manipulate digital data and not lose data quality, digital watermarking has become all the more necessary. Similar to the process when artists creatively signed their paintings with a brush to claim copyrights, artists of today can watermark their work by hiding their name within the image.

Professor Meeta demonstrated the various application areas where Digital Watermarking is being used like in the field of data security; watermarks may be used for certification, authentication, and conditional access, ‘inking information on documents, and authentication of image content.

Digital watermarks can also be adapted to mark white paper with the purpose of authenticating the originator, verify the authenticity of the document content, or to date the document. Photo development laboratories may insert a watermark into the picture to link the print to its negative.

Dr. N.K Pareek, Mr. Mazher Hussian and Dr. S.N.A Jaffery helped the participants to apply various functions related to watermarking using MATLAB.

Dr. Azimuddin khan concluded todays session by giving the vote of thanks to the faculty.

Tomorrow, the sixth day of the program, will witness sessions on Image Compression and Face Recognition. The time will be from 1:30pm to 7pm, and the sessions will be taken by Dr. Navneet Agrawal and Dr. Rashmi