Visual Cryptography and Image Watermarking Scheme for Generating Meaningful Information

This paper proposes a visual cryptography and image watermarking scheme for generating meaningful information. In the proposed scheme, the watermark is embedded into the protected image and visual cryptography scheme for generating two meaningful transparencies. The scheme is used to generate two public images and a secret image by using the visual cryptography technique. Then the secret image is registered to key watermark for further protection. In the step of watermark extraction, the watermark can be acquired by performing operation between the secret image and the public images. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme not only can clearly verify the copyright of the digital image, but also is robust to with stand several image processing attacks, such as random noise, holding, and crossing attacks. Keywords—Cryptography, visual secret sharing, digital image watermarking, image processing.