A Novel Approach of Color Image Hiding using RGB Color planes and DWT

This work proposes a wavelet based Steganographic technique for the color image. The true color cover image and the true color secret image both are decomposed into three separate color planes namely R, G and B. Each plane of the images is decomposed into four sub bands using DWT. Each color plane of the secret image is hidden by alpha blending technique in the corresponding sub bands of the respective color planes of the original image. During embedding, secret image is dispersed within the original image depending upon the alpha value. Extraction of the secret image varies according to the alpha value. In this approach the stego image generated is of acceptable level of imperceptibility and distortion compared to the cover image and the overall security is high.

💡 Research Summary

The paper introduces a novel color‑image steganographic scheme that simultaneously exploits the three RGB color planes and the multi‑resolution properties of the discrete wavelet transform (DWT). Both the true‑color cover image and the true‑color secret image are first decomposed into their red, green, and blue components. Each component is then subjected to a two‑level DWT, yielding four sub‑bands (LL, LH, HL, HH) per plane. The secret image’s corresponding color plane is embedded into the matching sub‑band of the cover image by means of an alpha‑blending operation:

 C_s = α·S + (1‑α)·C

where C is the cover sub‑band, S is the secret sub‑band, C_s is the resulting stego sub‑band, and α∈