Color image visual cryptography scheme with enhanced security

Abstract

Image encryption is one of the most promising fields of research in the conventional scientific society. Visual cryptography is a secured encryption technique which is used to encrypt a secret image based on share generation and superimposition rather than computing. This overcomes the burden of computation but the mammoth risk of attackers is superfluous to the passing of shares in sequence through the communication channel. However, this superimposing problem can be resolved by cracking some additional encryption algorithms alongside the visual cryptography. In this paper, we propose a highly secured visual cryptography scheme which uses encryption and error diffusion halftoning algorithms as intermediate steps in cryptography work. We have also done the comparative analysis in order to select the most optimum technique, among the available algorithms according to the requirement of the system. The proposed work has been tested on various formats of standard color images of varied resolutions and proven more secured than contemporary techniques.