1. Watermark Measuring Toolkit
Victor Karnaukhov
Institute for Information Transmission Problems,
Russian Academy of Sciences,
Moscow, Russia

2. Introduction Typical raw watermark images captured by using:
rubbing (left image) and beta-radiography

3. Introduction
Watermark Measuring Toolkit (WMT) is a software application for:
Computer aided measuring of watermark metric parameters
Watermark image enhancement
Geometrical transformations of watermark images
Export / Import tabulated values of the measured watermark image parameters

4. Watermark Measuring Toolkit
We need a precise measurement of metric parameters to minimize the number of watermark images used for comparison and identification of the watermark under processing.
An example: Gerard van Thienen used for comparison of watermark images the well known Photoshop. Men’s hand – hundreds of images!

5. Watermark Measuring Toolkit
A frame of the paper making mold with a watermark and two chain lines

6. Watermark Measuring Toolkit
Watermark Toolkit (WMT) software is written in the C++ language and works under Windows XP or higher operating system.
WMT has context dependent help system clickable by the “F1” key.

7. Watermark Measuring Toolkit
The Watermark Toolkit system displays watermark images in the natural size in all interface forms even they have different resolution.
It rescales all images “in the fly”.

8. Watermark Metric Parameteres
WM toolkit is designed to measure and save up to 6 metric parameters of the watermark image under processing:
Width of watermark
Height of watermark
Distance between chain lines
+ 3 optional metric parameters.

9. Width or Height Measurement
Width or height of an watermark image object is calculated as :
where
L is the measured width/height of the object in pixels,
R is the image resolution in pixels-per-inch (ppi).

10. Watermark Measuring Toolkit
The Watermark Toolkit system displays watermark images in the natural size in all interface forms even they have different resolution.
It rescales all images “in the fly”.

11. Watermark Parameter Measuring Form
The Watermark Parameter Measuring form plays four following basic roles:
Collects the measured watermark parameter values;
Creates and populates the watermark parameter table;
Export the watermark parameter table values to a text Comma-Separated Values (CSV) file;
Import the watermark parameter table values from a CSV file.

12. Watermark Parameter Measuring Form

13. Calculation of Image Resolution
The size of a digital Ld and the corresponding optical image Lo are linked as:
where R is the resolution in pixels-per-inch

14. Calculation of Image Resolution

15. Watermark Image Enhancement
The visual quality of watermark images is corrupted by a set of artifacts and distortions:
Low contrast
non-uniform background brightness.
The visual quality of watermark images, even captured by using the beta or electron radiography methods, has to be enhanced.

16. Acquisition and Digitizing of Watermarks
hand-drawn tracing
rubbing
beta radiography
electron radiography
multispectral (infrared, optical, ultraviolet, etc.) transmitted photography (or backlighting photography).

17. Digital Processing of Watermark Images
Typical raw watermark images captured by using:
rubbing (left image) and beta-radiography

18. Digital Processing of Watermark Images
The special locally adaptive algorithms and software tools were developed to enhance image quality and get watermark images with the normalized visual quality.
The images with the enhanced (normalized) quality are shown on the next slide.

19. Digital Processing of Watermark Images
Processed images the with normalized visual quality

21. Digital Processing of Watermark Images
Image processing functionallity:
geometrical transformations
low contrast correction
noise suppression
background brightness correction
image normalization

22. Acknowledgements Special thanks to my Austrian colleagues:
DI Emanuel Wenger for fruitful discussions
Dr. Maria Stieglecker for the testing of the different versions of the WMT software and her kind assistance in preparing of the watermark image capturing illustrations.

23. Dissemination of Watermark Toolkit
The Watermark Toolkit software is the freeware package .
It can download from the “Bernstein” Watermark Web-portal: