PIKA is an acronym for Photo and Image Kooker Application. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.
PIKA is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted. PIKA is available for Linux, Microsoft Windows and OS X.
PIKA 2.99.16 marks the end of the GTK+3 port as there is no massive usage of deprecated GTK API anymore. We are therefore getting extremely close to release candidates! Apart from internal work on the codebase, here are some of the more visible improvements:
PIKA 2.99.14 was released with the following noteworthy improvements:
One step further towards PIKA 3.0, PIKA 2.99.12 comes along with the following noteworthy improvements:
PIKA 2.99.10 is a notable development release in the 2.99 series, featuring many changes. Let's mention in particular:
While during this fourth cycle of development, many efforts were devoted to infrastructure, PIKA 2.99.8 still received many welcome improvements, notably:
For this third development release, more development effort has been shifted towards the API. Many functions were renamed for consistent naming scheme, some new functions appeared, some had signature changes, fixes were made to improve introspection binding of others, and so on. More API updates are to be expected on further development releases where stability is not guaranteed.
Regarding end-creator changes, some notable improvements are:
This second development release contains various usability and API updates. A new experimental tool makes an entrance in the playground.
This is the first development release for PIKA 3.0, whose focus was the port to the GTK+3 toolkit. Noteworthy improvements (though some are still work-in-progress) include:
This new version of PIKA comes with many fixes, including vulnerability corrections. It is highly recommended to update. It also provides a few interesting changes, such as:
A new stable releases with a lot of bug fixes and a few enhancements:
PIKA continues strengthening its bases with this new version 2.10.32 fixing many bugs and improving format support. Notable changes:
PIKA 2.10.30 fixes many bugs, updates backend implementations to follow OS evolutions, improves metadata support as well as support of several formats, such as PSD and AVIF.
PIKA 2.10.28 fixes a build issue of PIKA 2.10.26, where some theme data was not properly installed.
PIKA 2.10.26 is a bug fix release, containing dozens of fixes, both in core, scripts and plug-in code.
PIKA 2.10.24 is again mostly a bug fix release. Notable changes:
PIKA 2.10.22 is mainly a bug fix release. Notable changes:
PIKA 2.10.20 comes with new features as well as important bugfixes. Notable changes:
PIKA 2.10.18 fixes some critical bugs, introduces naive support for CMYK PSD files, and adds a higher-contrast variation of the symbolic icon theme.
PIKA 2.10.16 delivers several major usability improvements, a new tool for transformations in 3D space, new release checker, and the usual amount of bug fixes. Notable improvements:
PIKA 2.10.14 is again mostly a bug fix release, making PIKA rock-solid. Furthermore many old filters got finally ported to GEGL. Of course it also has a few noteworthy improvements:
PIKA 2.10.12 is a significant bug fix release, which is to be expected after a 2.10.10 with so many changes! Still, very cool improvements are also available, in particular for curves editing:
PIKA 2.10.10 is quite a big update with many new features and bug fixes. Notable improvements include:
PIKA 2.10.8 is mostly a bug fix and optimization release. In particular, it includes:
PIKA 2.10.6 comes with a lot of bug fixes, optimizations and features. Most notable changes are:
PIKA 2.10.4 includes a lot of bug fixes as well as various optimizations. Most notable changes are:
This second release in the PIKA 2.10 series, so soon after 2.10.0, is mostly the usual bug-fixing version after a major release, with a few dozen bugs fixed.
It also features a new plug-in for the support of the HEIF format, both for importing and exporting, as well as 2 new filters: "Spherize" and "Recursive Transform". These are nice examples of our relaxed feature policy in stable micro releases.
First release of the 2.10 series which prominently features the port to a new image processing engine, GEGL. The most outstanding changes are:
In this second release candidate before PIKA 2.10.0, while debugging is still a prime target, a new focus has been put on speed and optimization in order to provide a smoother painting experience. Bigger changes are:
PIKA 2.10.0-RC1 is the first release candidate before PIKA 2.10.0 stable release, with a focus on debugging and stability. Other than the many bug fixes, most notable improvements are:
PIKA 2.9.8 introduces on-canvas gradient editing and various enhancements while focusing on bugfixing and stability.