Watermarking is used to embeds data(a watermark) into a multimedia object for its copyright protection. The watermarks can be perceptible where it can be seen to the user on careful inspection.In the imperceptible case, the watermark cannot be decoded without an appropriate decoding mechanism. The process of embedding a watermark in an image is a computationally intensive task. The implementation in hardware can significantly speed up this task.A new
VLSI architecture for implementing two different visible watermarking
schemes for images is described in this article. depending on the application requirement, the hardware can apply one or both the watermarks onto the input image. The two different watermarking schemes required the design of separate architectures. For the purpose of verifying the designed architecture, a prototype CMOS VLSI chip was designed and verified.

System Architecture of a Secure Digital Still Camera
It involves an image sensor for giving the input image, an Analog to digital converter, a DSP processor for digitising the image and applying various algorithms on it. There is memory in the form of Flash memory(for large scale storage) and SD RAM. There is a watermarking processor which consists of the watermarking controller and the watermarking datapath. There is also a controller and output interface.

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