In this paper, we propose a method to embed the color information of an image in a corresponding grey-level image. The objective of this work is to allow free access to the grey-level image and give color image access only if you own a secret key. This method is made of three major steps which are a fast color quantization, an optimized ordering and an adapted data hiding. The principle is to build an index image which is, in the same time, a semantically intelligible grey-level image. In order to obtain this particular index image, which should be robust to data hiding, a layer running algorithm is proceeded to sort the K colors of the palette. The major contributions of this paper are the fast color quantization, the optimized layer running algorithm, the color palette compression and the adapted data hiding.