Color extended visual cryptography using error diffusion.

Abstract

Color visual cryptography (VC) encrypts a color secret message into n color halftone image shares. Previous methods in the literature show good results for black and white or gray scale VC schemes, however, they are not sufficient to be applied directly to color shares due to different color structures. Some methods for color visual cryptography are not satisfactory in terms of producing either meaningless shares or meaningful shares with low visual quality, leading to suspicion of encryption. This paper introduces the concept of visual information pixel (VIP) synchronization and error diffusion to attain a color visual cryptography encryption method that produces meaningful color shares with high visual quality. VIP synchronization retains the positions of pixels carrying visual information of original images throughout the color channels and error diffusion generates shares pleasant to human eyes. Comparisons with previous approaches show the superior performance of the new method.