Halftoning Based Algorithms for Image Hiding

Digital halftoning is an important process to convert a continuous-tone image into a binary image with pure black and white pixels. This process is necessary when printing a monochrome or color image by a printer with limited number of ink colors. The main contribution of this paper is to present a halftoning method that conceals a binary image into two binary images. More specifically, three distinct gray scale images are given, such that one of them should be hidden in the other two gray scale images. Our halftoning method generates three binary images that reproduce the tone of the corresponding original three gray scale images. Quite surprisingly, the secret binary image can be seen by overlapping the other two binary images. In other words, the secret binary image is hidden in two public binary images. Also, it is very hard to guess the secret images using only one of the two public images, and both of these two public images are necessary to get the secret image. Another contribution of this paper is to extend our halftoning method to hide one image and more than one image into more than two images. The resulting images show that our halftoning method hides and recovers the original images. Hence, our halftoning technique can be used for watermarking as well as amusement purpose.