PIKTURE (PIK)

Fast. Small. Easy.

PIKTURE is a high-performance, lossless image format designed for systems where decoding speed and binary simplicity are critical. It is built on the FSE philosophy: Fast execution, Small file size, and Easy integration.

Why PIKTURE?

Standard formats like PNG are often bottlenecked by heavy decompression algorithms (DEFLATE/ZIP). PIKTURE replaces complex bit-shuffling with a hardware-friendly INDEX + Delta encoding, allowing the CPU to stream pixels directly to memory with minimal overhead.

Key Features

• Lossless: 100% bit-perfect reproduction of RGBA data.
• Ultra-Fast: Near-memcpy decoding speeds.
• Small Footprint: Single-header C99 library with zero dependencies.
• Smart Alpha: Automatically optimizes storage when transparency is not used.

Performance Comparison

Benchmark results for a 5K professional image (sample 5120x3840):

Format	File Size	Difference	Decoding Complexity
PNG	16.2 MB	Baseline	High (CPU Intensive)
PIKTURE (PIK)	10.1 MB	- 6.1 MB (37%)	Minimal (Linear Stream)

Implementation

The core library consists of only two files: pikture.h and pikture.c.

Building

The project is designed to be cross-compiled using the Zig toolchain for maximum portability across Linux, Windows, and macOS.

# Run the build script to generate static and shared libraries
./build.sh | UNIX
./build.bat | WINDOWS