Hoku is an image processing software

Hoku is used to process multispectral image data sets to recover writings that have been damaged or erased. It is a Java-base software package distributed free-of-charge, without warranty.

Dr. Keith T. Knox, creator of Hoku, independent imaging scientist and EMEL chief scientific advisor.
Hoku is a batch processing software package. Jobs are defined and parameters are set interactively with a graphical user interface, but jobs are run in batch mode until they conclude.

There are no interactive image processing methods available. You cannot touch-up or draw on an image with this software, but you can apply any of several image processing methods to enhance image details that otherwise are difficult to see.

How To

To install the new Hoku application, on a macOS or Linux, you must have system administrator privileges on your computer. If you do not have such privileges, see if a system administrator will load the software for you.
 
Hoku applications are available for the macOS, Windows, and Linux. Download the Zip file containing the appropriate installation program from the following links. Double-click the downloaded Zip file to extract and decompress the installation folder.

Full instructions on how to install Hoku are contained in the “Instructions” file within each folder.
 
Installing Java on your computer is not needed for these applications.
They have the necessary Java runtime code embedded within them.

To upgrade Hoku from an earlier version, on Windows, you will need to first uninstall Hoku. On macOS, it will ask you if it can uninstall the previous version for you, as you install the new version. On Linux, as superuser, the new installation will simply overwrite the older version.

Download the appropriate zip file for your computer platform and double-click on the installer.  Your existing data, on your Hoku Shelf and Hoku Desktop will not be changed.  All of your existing data will be available to you in the new version of Hoku.

You may contact the author at the email address below if you have questions, need help on a specific problem, run into problems, or have comments or suggestions.

Keith Knox

Learn Hoku

A Wiki / Tutorial that can help you familiarize with Hoku.

https://wiki.hoku.emelibrary.org/

Download Hoku

Hoku is available for a variety of platforms.

Latest Hoku version is:
v3.0, released on 28 May 2025.
Macintosh
Windows
Linux 
New Features in version 3.0
The modules on the Cupboard, have been divided into three levels, Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced. Hoku now starts in the Basic mode. To change between levels, right-click in the Cupboard and choose the desired level. The modules available at that level and below will be available in the cupboard. Although some modules only appear at the higher levels, they will operate on the Desktop at any level.

A new module, AccuColor, has been added at the Intermediate level. This module will read an image of a colorchecker chart, along with the XYZ values of the color patches on the chart, to create a calibration matrix. That matrix can be used to convert a set of reflectance images into a calibrated three-band, LAB color image.

The bug which was preventing a working Linux version, was found. As a result, a Linux version of Hoku 3.0 is available in this release.

Learn Hoku

A Wiki / Tutorial that can help you familiarize with Hoku.

Wiki Hoku

License

Copyright (C) 2021-2025  Keith T. Knox
 
 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.
 
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.
 
You can read the GNU General Public License in LICENSE.txt. You may also obtain a copy of the license by writing to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
 
Keith Knox

29 November 2024