For color host images

a novel adaptive watermarking algorithm based on hypercomplex Fourier transform is proposed in this paper.Firstly the color host image is transferred into hypercomplex frequency domain.Then some real parts of the hypercomplex frequency spectra of the color host image are selected.Based on the different mask properties of the human vision system about the texture

edge and luminance of the color host image

the selected frequency spectra are put the different mask weights for the embedded watermark.As a result

an adaptive watermarking algorithm for color host images in hypercomplex spectrum domain is realized.Experimental results show that the robustness and insensitiveness of our method are much improved by the adaptive masks of the color image.Its anti-attacking capability is also much better than the hypercomplex watermarking algorithm without adaptive masks.Comparison results with the known ones in literature verify such superiorities of the proposed algorithm.