Advancing data privacy in color images through pixel-specific data hiding techniques

Recently, it has become important to ensure data privacy, both when communicating and storing data. Data hiding studies used to provide this privacy have become popular in recent years, and many methods have been proposed. Especially, because of its high capacity, digital color images are more widely used in data hiding. Generally, data hiding is applied to the whole image only by a standard or hybrid method. This article proposes hiding data using different techniques for each pixel of the digital color images. The determination of data hiding techniques depends on the initial pixel value of the cover image and the number of techniques. By adopting this approach, the proposed method ensures confidentiality, privacy, undetectability, and imperceptibility of the hidden data within the cover image. Furthermore, the article introduces a solution to address the fall of boundary problem (FOBP) within the proposed method. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach exhibits flexibility, adaptability, and resistance to attacks.