A Data Hiding Scheme for High Dynamic Range Images

This paper proposes a data hiding method for high dynamic range images with the LogLuv encoding format. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first data hiding algorithm developed in the literature for such an HDR format. Our scheme considers both the luminance channel and two chromatic channels when we embed a secret message. This allows us to conceal up to 6 bits of secret messages in the luminance channel with floating point representation and 10 bits of secret messages in each chromatic channel with integer representation. Consideration of the luminance and chromatic channels allows our scheme to be able to provide the embedding capacity of 26 bits per pixel, which is the magnitude of 3.42 ∼ 3.46 times over the current state-of-the-art HDR data hiding algorithm. Still, our method can produce a low distortion HDR image and a visually pleasing tone-mapped low dynamic range image. Experimental results confirmed that our algorithm can embed and extract secret messages correctly without referring to the original cover HDR image. The proposed algorithm is simple, efficient and feasible for hiding secret messages in an HDR image.