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 5120x2880):

PIK Load Time: 0.111735 seconds
PIK Dimensions: 5120x2880

PNG Load Time: 0.193990 seconds
PNG Dimensions: 5120x2880

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 (macOS / Linux)
./build.bat | WINDOWS

Technical Specification

PIKTURE uses a custom byte-stream protocol:

0x00 - 0x3F: INDEX - Fetch pixel from a 64-color LRU cache.
0x40 - 0x7F: DIFF - Apply small RGB deltas.
0x80 - 0xBF: LUMA - Apply green-relative color deltas.
0xC0 - 0xFD: RUN - Repeat previous pixel.
0xFE: RGB - Full 24-bit color change.
0xFF: RGBA - Full 32-bit color change.

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