Image Steganography Techniques for Optimized Embedding in Image Processing

Steganography is one of the methods used for the hidden exchange of information. It is the art and science of invisible communication, which strives to hide the existence of the communicated message. In this way, if successfully it is achieved, the message does not attract attention from eavesdroppers and attackers. Using steganography, information can be hidden in different embedding mediums, known as carriers. These carriers can be images, audio files, video files, and text files. The focus in this paper is on the use of an image file as a carrier, and hence, the taxonomy of current steganographic techniques for image files has been presented. Images are categorized on the basis of size, texture and types that include only jpeg, bmp and png types to determine their impending impact on steganographic methods. Text data to be embedded is classified and selected of varying capacities and domains to determine best suited data compression mechanisms and steganographic techniques. Our results designate the selection of compression and embedding techniques with respect to types of data.