Encryption and steganography protect different things. Encryption protects the contents of a file by making them unreadable without the correct key. Steganography aims to conceal that data has been placed inside another file.
An encrypted file can be identified as encrypted even when its contents cannot be read. That may be acceptable when the goal is confidentiality. Encryption does not, by itself, hide the fact that a protected file exists.
Steganography can place a payload in an image, audio file, or other carrier. The carrier may appear ordinary, but steganography alone does not make the payload secret. If someone finds and extracts it, they may be able to read it unless it was encrypted separately.
Pyxelze combines the two approaches. It encrypts an archive with AES-256-GCM, then encodes that archive in a PNG image. A person who extracts the payload still needs the password to decrypt it.
Neither method removes every risk. A weak password can be guessed, and editing or recompressing an image can damage its hidden data. Use a strong password and verify that the saved image can be reopened before deleting the source files.
