Payload minion stenographic technique for color images

Incredible evolution of Internet, Digital devices and communication channels lead to an enormous increase in data leading to demand of Data security systems. Image stenography is the technique to hide data inside an image. This paper proposes a message dependent image stenography technique for concealing information into a cover image. Arnold transform is used with 24-bit key insertion before Haar Wavelet Transform based compression of message signal ensuring the security of the message from the untrusted third party. Then based on the statistical features and Payload efficiency decided by the user, the technique finds the adequate coefficients from cover image maintaining the high visual quality for the image. Experimental results show that the technique works better for payload less than 50%as the PSNR for 50 images were found to be 42.75dB. Higher the payload lowers the quality of staego image obtained.