Sensitive secret data transmission through internet has been of great security concern which can be overcome by steganographic methods achieved through secret image sharing. Two novel steganographic secret algorithms based on colour visual cryptography and exact histogram specification is proposed in the present study. The former approach combines colour visual cryptography with a secret key to produce less distorted meaningful share images. A specified histogram acts as the key for the second approach and provides better security and data obscurity compared to conventional approaches. A novel histogram specification method is also proposed which exactly matches the histogram of an image to a specified histogram. © Research India Publications.