Digital to quantum watermarking: A journey from past to present and into the future

With the amplification of digitization, the surge in multimedia content, such as text, video, audio, and images, is incredible. Concomitantly, the incidence of multimedia tampering is also apparently increasing. Digital watermarking (DW) is the means of achieving privacy and authentication of the received content while preserving integrity and copyright. Literature has produced a plethora of state-of-the-art DW techniques to achieve the right balance between its performance measuring parameters, including high imperceptibility, increased watermarking ability, and tamper-free recovery. Meanwhile, during the vertex of DW, scientific advances in quantum computing led to the emergence of quantum-based watermarking. Though quantum watermarking (QW) is in its nascent stage, it has become captivating among researchers to dive deep inside it. This study not only investigates the performance of existing DW techniques but also extensively assesses the recently devised QW techniques. It further presents how the principles of quantum entanglement and superposition can be decisive in achieving superior immunity against several watermarking attacks. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the unique one to present a comprehensive review of both DW as well as QW techniques. Therefore, the facts presented in this study could be a baseline for the researchers to devise a novel DW or QW technique.