Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 1996/013

On the Contrast in Visual Cryptography Schemes

Carlo Blundo, Alfredo De Santis, and Douglas R. Stinson

Abstract: A visual cryptography scheme is a method to encode a secret image SI into shadow images called shares such that certain qualified subsets of shares enable the ``visual'' recovery of the secret image. The ``visual'' recovery consists of xeroxing the shares onto transparencies, and then stacking them. The shares of a qualified set will reveal the secret image without any cryptographic computation. In this paper we analyze the contrast of the reconstructed image in k out of n visual cryptography schemes. (In such a scheme any k shares will reveal the image, but no set of k-1 shares gives any information about the image.) In the case of 2 out of n threshold schemes we give a complete characterization of schemes having optimal contrast and minimum pixel expansion in terms of certain balanced incomplete block designs. In the case of k out of n threshold schemes with k>2 we obtain upper and lower bounds on the optimal contrast.

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Publication Info: Appeared in the THEORY OF CRYPTOGRAPHY LIBRARY and has been included in the ePrint Archive.

Date: received September 25, 1996.

Contact author: carblu at udsab dia unisa it

Available format(s): Postscript (PS) | Compressed Postscript (PS.GZ) | BibTeX Citation

Short URL: ia.cr/1996/013

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