Color Image Information Hiding Based on Perceptual Color Clustering

This paper proposes a color image information hiding algorithm based on perceptual color clustering. In the procedures of hiding information, the first step is merging carrier's each color into specified number of color clustering according to the relation from RGB to HVC and the conception of NBS distance in HVC color space; and then the information is hidden by replacing each hiding-place's color with the color in the same color clustering which is selected according to the hiding information, and the hiding capability of each pixel depends on the number of colors in which color cluster it belongs to. In order to extract the hidden information, the index of pixel color is looked up from its color cluster. In the end, the experimental results of several images using this algorithm are presented.