A novel color image steganography scheme based on discrete wavelet transforms (DWT) is proposed for better security. The proposed approach extracts R, G, and B planes from the color cover image. The DWT is applied on both secret image and RGB components of the cover image. The blocking process is applied to approximation coefficients of secret image and detail coefficients of RGB components of the cover image. The block of detail coefficients is replaced with approximation coefficient of secret image using root mean square error method. The key is used to store the position of best matching blocks. The proposed approach is compared with recently developed steganography technique. The experimental results reveal that the proposed approach improves the performance of steganography technique in terms of Peak Signal to Noise Ratio value. The stegano image has good visual quality also.

Color image steganography, Discrete wavelet transforms, PSNR

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