Reversible data hiding for high dynamic range images using two-dimensional prediction-error histogram of the second time prediction

•According to the RGBE encoding format, a specific PEE based RDH scheme for HDR images is designed. The redundancy among RGBE channels can be exploited effectively while protecting the information in each original channel from the RGBE encoding.•The second time predictions among color channels are applied to furthermore explore inter-channel correlations and enhance prediction accuracy.•Two-dimensional PEH is used in prediction procedure to organize the prediction-errors and maximize the embedding capacity.•Based on the generated two-dimensional PEH, an adaptive embedding strategy is designed to reduce the embedding distortion. High dynamic range (HDR) images have become a wide-spread data format in multimedia communication due to its great expressiveness. In this paper, we present an efficient prediction-error histogram (PEH) based reversible data hiding (RDH) method for HDR images. To better exploit the correlation among encoded channels, a novel RDH scheme based on two-dimensional PEH of the second time prediction is designed. Firstly, the prediction-errors are calculated considering the encoding format of HDR images. Secondly, those pixels located in the complex regions are predicted for the second time by referring to the other channels. Thirdly, the two-dimensional PEH is generated to further optimize the embedding performance and maximize the embedding capacity (EC). Finally, an adaptive embedding strategy based on the two-dimensional PEH is employed to reduce the embedding distortion. With the second time prediction and the two-dimensional PEH strategy, our proposed method can greatly exploit the correlations among channels. Experimental results verify that the proposed method can significantly enlarge the embedding capacity and achieves an excellent embedding performance.