Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one suspects the existence of the message, a form of security through obscurity. Many different carrier file formats can be used, but digital images are the most popular because of their frequency on the internet. In this paper explains the PIGPEN image steganography technique which modifies the secret message itself not the technique of embedding. This technique represents the secret message characters by two decimal digits only not three decimal digits as ASCII encoding. So, it can save one third of the required space for embedding the message in an image. The PIGPEN technique will be enhanced by using the zigzag scanning to increase the security and achieves higher visual quality as indicated by the high peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) in spite of hiding a large number of secret bits in the image.

Steganography is one of the important information hiding techniques which hides the existence of the message in the cover file. By using steganography, secret messages can be hidden in carriers such as images, audio files, text files and videos. Many different carrier file formats can be used, but digital images are the most popular because of their frequency on the internet. Steganography is used to conceal the information so that no one can sense its existence. In this paper the performance of hiding image technique will be enhanced by modifying the secret message itself not the technique of embedding. That is by using a new encoding technique based on the Pigpen cipher that will represent the secret message characters by two decimal digits only not three decimal digits as ASCII encoding. So, it can save one third of the required space for embedding the message in an image.