(IJCSIS) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security,Vol. 9, No.

3, March 2011

AN IMPROVED VISUAL CRYPTOGRAPHY SCHEMEFOR SECRET HIDING

Cryptography is the practice and studyof hiding information. Cryptography, then, not only protectsdatafrom theft or alteration, but can also be used for userauthentication. There are, in general,three types of cryptographic schemes typically used to accomplish thesegoals: secret key(or symmetric) cryptography, public-key (orasymmetric) cryptography, and hash functions. In all cases,the initial unencrypted data is referred to as plaintext . It isencrypted into ciphertext , which will in turn (usually) bedecrypted into usable plaintext.Visual Cryptography is a type of cryptography whichencodes a number of images in the way that when the imageson transparencies are stacked together, the hidden messageappears without a trace of original images. The decryption isdone directly by the human visual system with no specialcryptographic calculations. This project presents a systemwhich takes three pictures as an input and generates twoimages which correspond to two of the three input pictures.The third picture is reconstructed by printing the two outputimages onto transparencies and stacking them together.While the previous researches basically handle onlybinary images, this project establishes the extended visualcryptography scheme suitable for natural images. Generally,visual cryptography suffers from the deterioration of the imagequality. This project also describes the method to improve thequality of the output images. The trade-off between the imagequality and the security are discussed and assessed byobserving the actual results of this method. Furthermore, theoptimization of the image quality is discussed. A digital image is a computer file that contains graphical information instead of text or a program.Pixels are the basic building blocks of all digital images.Pixels are small adjoining squares in a matrix across the lengthand width of your digital image. They are so small that youdont see the actual pixels when the image is on yourcomputer monitor.Pixels are monochromatic. Each pixel is a single solidcolor that is blended from some combination of the 3 primarycolors of Red, Green, and Blue. So, every pixel has a REDcomponent, a GREEN component and BLUE component. Thephysical dimensions of a digital image are measured in pixelsand commonly called pixel or image resolution. Pixels arescalable to different physical sizes on your computer monitoror on a photo print. However, all of the pixels in any particulardigital image are the same size. Pixels as represented in aprinted photo become round slightly overlapping dots

(IJCSIS) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security,Vol. 9, No. 3, March 2011 BIBILOGRAPHY

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