In the contemporary era of digital advancements, it is of utmost importance to prioritize the establishment of robust security measures and traceability protocols for photos. This necessity arises from the inherent risk associated with the effortless diffusion of unlicensed information. Digital watermarking, which implants hidden data into digital photographs to verify their validity, is frequently used. This level emphasizes the need of safe photo distribution, digital platform problems, and unauthorized reproductions. The purpose of this research is to explain digital watermarking fundamentals. It emphasizes verification, IP protection, and digital watermarking monitoring. This research compares spatial and frequency domain watermarking approaches. Direct pixel manipulation in spatial domain techniques is vulnerable to attacks. Integrating watermarks with transform domains like Discrete Cosine Transform improves robustness in frequency domain techniques. The study also studies adaptive watermarking, which adjusts the watermark to the image's content to balance visibility and durability. The purpose of this research is to explore watermark identification methods. These methods use blind and non-blind watermarking. We discuss the security risks that might compromise watermarked photographs and the ways to reduce their likelihood. © 2024 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.