ISSN 2303-4521 Periodicals of Engineering and Natural Sciences Original Research Vol. 10, No. 2, April 2022, pp.358-375 © The Author 2022. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) that allows others to share and adapt the material for any purpose (even commercially), in any medium with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. 358 Text image secret sharing with hiding based on color feature Nuha J. Ibrahim 1 , Yossra H. Ali 1 , Alyaa Al-barrak 2 and Tarik Ahmed Rashid 3 1 Computer Science Department, University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq 2 Computer Science Department, college of science, University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq 3 Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of Kurdistan Hewler, Erbil, Iraq ABSTRACT The Secret Sharing is a scheme for sharing data into n pieces using (k, n) threshold method. Secret Sharing becomes an efficient method to ensure secure data transmission. Some visual cryptography techniques don’t guarantee security transmission because the secret information can be retrieved if the hackers obtain the number of shares. This study present a secret sharing method with hiding based on YCbCr color space. The proposed method is based on hiding the secret text file or image into a number of the cover image. The proposed method passes through three main steps: the first is to convert the secret text file or image and all cover images from RGB to YCbCr, the second step is to convert each color band to binary vector, then divide this band in the secret image into four-part, each part is appended with a binary vector of each cover image in variable locations, the third step is converting the color space from YCbCr to RGB color space and the generated shares, hidden with covers, are ready for transmission over the network. Even if the hackers get a piece of data or even all, they cannot retrieve the whole picture because they do not know where to hide the information. The results of the proposed scheme guarantee sending and receiving data of any length. The proposed method provides more security and reliability when compared with others. It hides an image of size (234x192) pixels with four covers. The MSE result is 3.12 and PSNR is 43.74. The proposed method shows good results, where the correlation between secret and retrieved images is strong ranging from (0.96 to 0.99). In the proposed method the reconstructed image quality is good, where original and reconstructed images Entropy are 7.224, 7.374 respectively. Keywords: Secret sharing, YCbCr color space, Visual cryptography Corresponding Author: Nuha J. Ibrahim Computer Science Department University of Technology Baghdad, Iraq Nuha.j.ibrahim@uotechnology.edu.iq 1. Introduction Visual cryptography is a secret sharing scheme that allows encryption of a secret image among a number of participants, the decryption of the secret image requires neither knowledge of cryptography nor complex computation, it can encrypt a large amount of secret information, i.e., an entire image where the content can be versatile. VCS can be applied in secret sharing, information hiding, identification/authentication, copyright protection, etc. [1]. Access to very important resources via several authorized people is showing the necessity of secret sharing. Many techniques were improved to serve increasing levels of secret sharing security focusing on information privacy becoming one of the most significant computing sciences leading to growth in demand for data and media technologies [2, 3]. At present, effective management and protection of the content of digital multimedia, in addition to the prevention and deletion of computer crimes and increasingly dangerous information from illegal diversion, have become a point of contact in the field of information security [4-7]. The encryption techniques are used to ensure that the message is not damaged through the use of secret keys by different methods; thus, the eavesdropper cannot understand the confidential information. However, at the same time, the results of encryption can attract the attention of hackers, in addition, cryptographic algorithms are complex encryption and decryption operations require large space and time, then the secret sharing scheme is