With the current emergence of the Internet, there is a need to securely transfer images between systems. In this context, we propose a secure image encryption algorithm that uses both AES and Visual Cryptographic techniques to protect the image. The image is encrypted using AES and an encoding schema has been proposed to convert the key into shares based on Visual Secret Sharing. The cryptanalysis of the algorithm is then performed and is proved to be secure. The proposed algorithm is then implemented using python and the results are discussed along with the possible future modifications. © 2016 IEEE.