VISUAL CRYPTOGRAPHY SCHEME FOR COLOR IMAGES

Visual cryptography is a method for protecting image based secrets that has a computation-free decoding process. In this paper, we propose a new visual cryptography scheme for color images based on CMY model, half toning technique and the traditional binary image sharing scheme. The image shares generated by our method are transmitted to the destination through a network and the image is decrypted by stacking any two transparencies. The image can be in any standard format. This scheme provides an efficient way to hide the natural image among different shares. Furthermore, the size of the shares and the implementation complexity do not depend on the number of colors appearing in the secret image.