Abstract: In order to achieve effective protection of color image information, an encryption algorithm with the combination of pixel scrambling and ciphertext crossdiffusion technology is proposed. Firstly, the chaotic sequences generated by three fractionalorder chaotic systems are modified to obtain two groups of chaotic key sequences with good property, and the RGB color image is converted into a grayscale image which is composed by primary color components. Secondly, the pixels’ positions of the grayscale image are scrambled by means of one group of improved chaotic key sequences. Thirdly, by using another group of improved chaotic key sequences, the study modifies the pixels’ values of the scrambled image with two rounds of ciphertext crossdiffusion operations between the primary color components and gets the cipher image. Simulation shows that, this algorithm is of a sufficiently large key space, highly sensitive keys, better pixel distribution characteristics, and a good performance against ciphertextonly attack, differential attack, chosen plaintext attack and statistical attack. This can be widely used in secure communication of multimedia data.