Traditional cryptographic schemes require end users to employ complex operations for encryption as well as decryption. An alternative to this is visual cryptography, where the decryption is completely performed by the human visual system.
Visual cryptography (VC) schemes hide the secret image into two or more images which are called shares. The secret image can be recovered simply by stacking the shares together without any complex computation involved. The shares are very safe because
separately they reveal nothing about the secret image. Earlier, visual cryptographic schemes were restricted to binary images and the shares generated were made of random black and white pixels. Recent efforts have resulted in extended visual cryptography schemes where the secret image is hidden behind two cover images. We have proposed a new extended visual cryptography scheme utilizing error diffusion halftone technique and coding tables which will result in a better quality decrypted image.