Abstract: The insatiate demands for applications of imagery on the internet have further emphasized the importance of data hiding research. In this study, we proposed an improved reversible contrast mapping data hiding scheme that emphasized on the variance feature of the cover image. The cover image is partitioned into blocks where the variance of each block is calculated and sorted. Data was then embedded by reversible contrast mapping in these sorted blocks for which low variance blocks are embedded prior to those high variance blocks. In the proposed scheme, high payload is maintained and embedment can be selective to achieve high stego-image quality. In comparison to another similar work, the proposed scheme preserved significantly high quality in the stego-image especially for small payload.