• Proceedings of the Korea Multimedia Society Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.147-150
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• 2004

워터마킹은 디지털 영상에 저작권 정보를 삽입하여 불법복제를 막는 중요한 기술이다. 지금까지는 주로 온라인 디지털 영상에 대한 워터마크 연구가 주로 이루어져 왔다. 본 논문은 온라인이 아닌 인쇄된 영상에서의 워터마킹 기술을 다룬다. 워터마크 비트에 따라 디더링시 사용하는 임계값 패턴을 다르게 하여 인쇄 영상 안에 워터마크를 삽입한다. 워터마크의 추출은 하프토닝된 인쇄 영상을 역하프토닝하여 원래의 그레이스케일 영상으로 복원한 다음, 워터마크 삽입 때 사용한 여러 개의 디더링 임계값 패턴을 사용하여 디더링한 후, 이 결과를 원래의 하프토닝 영상과 비교하여 가장 많이 일치하는 임계값 패턴을 찾아냄으로써 추출된다. 실험을 통하여 제안된 방법이 기존의 방법보다 워터마크 추출률이 우수하며 스캐너와 프린터의 하드웨어적인 특성을 고려한 공격시에도 더 강인함을 보였다.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.44 no.4 s.316
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• pp.17-25
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• 2007

Multilevel inkjet printer employs multiple ink droplets with variable dot size and/or different concentrations intended to preserve high fidelity color reproduction and the appearance of continuous tone. A variety of research efforts on multitoning techniques has progressed toward better image quality. However, banding artifacts appear due to the same dot distributions near the printable output levels. This results in discontinuity and visually unpleasing output, especially at the smooth tone transition region. In this paper, to reduce the banding artifacts, a multitoning method to arrange ink distribution by controlling the blending proportion of adjacent output pixels based on an improved threshold scaling function is proposed. Ink distributions across the banding regions are changed according to two factors of the threshold scaling function because these factors handle the blending point of adjacent output pixel. Therefore, 8 observers, subjectively investigated ink distributions around the printable output levels for a set of the improved threshold scaling function. For a threshold scaling function with the specific factor values, we can achieve smoother visual transition. In the experiment, the proposed method showed a reduction of banding artifacts in both u-ay and color image and represented better Performance of color reproduction.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.43 no.2 s.308
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• pp.40-47
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• 2006

This paper proposes a multitoning method using threshold modulation of MJBNM(Modified Jointly Blue Noise Mask) for banding artifacts reduction. As banding artifacts in multitoning appear as uniform dot distributions around the intermediate output levels, such multitone output results in discontinuity and visually unpleasing patterns in smooth transition regions. Therefore, to reduce these banding artifacts, the proposed method rearranges the dot distribution by introducing pixels in the neighborhood of output levels that occurs banding artifacts. First of all principal cause of banding artifacts are analyzed using mathematical description. Based on this analytical result, a threshold modulation technique of MJBNM which takes account of chrominance error and correlation between channels is applied. The original threshold range of MJBNM is first scaled linearly sot that the minimum and maximum of the scaled range include two pixel more than adjacent two output levels that cover an input value. In an input value is inside the vicinity of any intermediate output levels produce banding artifacts, the output is set to one of neighboring output levels based on the pointwise comparison result according to threshold modulation parameter that determines the dot density and distribution. In this case, adjacent pixels are introduced at the position where the scaled threshold values are located between two output levels and the minimum and maximum threshold values. Otherwise, a conventional multitoning method is applied. As a result, the proposed method effectively decreased the appearance of banding artifacts around the intermediate output levels. To evaluate the quality of the multitone result, HVS-WRMSE according to gray level for gray ramp image and S-CIELAB color difference for color ramp image are compared with other methods.

• Proceedings of the Korea Multimedia Society Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.144-149
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• 2003

본 논문은 그레이 스케일 인쇄 영상의 저작권을 보호할 수 있는 워터마킹 기법에 관한 연구이다. 기존의 인쇄영상 워터마크 기법은 순서 디더링(ordered dithering)을 이용하는 까닭에 인쇄 영상의 화질 감소가 발생한다. 본 연구에서는 영상 하프토닝 기법중 오류 확산(error diffusion) 알고리즘을 이용하여 화질을 개선한 영상내에 워터마크를 삽입한다. 제안된 알고리즘은 Hagit이 제안한 순서 디더링 셀 집합을 사용한 워터마크를 오류확산 하프토닝 이미지에 삽입함으로 영상의 시각적인 화질 감소가 없을 뿐만 아니라, 프린터와 스캐너에 의한 영상의 변형에도 워터마크의 삽입과 추출이 가능하다. 제안된 알고리즘으로 워터마킹하는 경우 스캐너와 프린터의 기기적인 특성에서 나타나는 잡음과 회전에도 강한 워터마크를 삽입하고 추출할 수 있다.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.327-339
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• 2004

In this paper, we propose a new watermark algorithm for halftone images using iterative error minimizing method. In the proposed method, watermark bits are hidden at pseudo-random locations within a halftone image. To remove the distortions due to the inserted watermark bits and increase the invisibility of watermark, an iterative error minimizing technique is used. We define the halftoning error is defined as the difference between the original grayscale image and HVS-filtered printed halftone image. Then we iteratively find the pixel pattern with minimum halftoning error and displace the original pixel pattern with it. In order to be robust to geometrical modification like cropping or rotation, we insert the same watermark periodically into halftone images. Experiments using printed and scanned images show that the proposed method is a robust method to the geometrical modification and to hide the large amount of data within a halftone image without noticeable distortion.