Hoku is an image processing software
Hoku is a Java-based software package to process multispectral image data sets to recover writings that have been damaged or erased. It is distributed free-of-charge, without warranty.
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
New Features in version 3.1
Your user data is now stored in the official location for an application’s user data. The user data locations for the different platforms are shown in the last page of the Tutorial. When you upgrade Hoku to version 3.1, all of your user data will be moved
to its new location, automatically upon installation of version 3.1.
Besides the regular “shelf”, two new shelves have been added, one called “archive” and the other “trash”. By right-clicking on an item on the “shelf”, you may choose to move that item to the “archive” or the “trash”. An item can only be deleted from
the “trash”. Any item in the “archive” or the “trash” can be restored to the “shelf”.
All jobs, either stars (4-pointed) or clusters (8-pointed) on the Desktop or the Shelf, and folders on the Shelf, now have a modification time associated with them. This time is updated whenever a job or folder is modified. You can view its associated time by right-clicking the item and selecting “info” from the popup menu.
A “dark” mode was added to Hoku. You can enter the “dark” mode from the popup menu in the Cupboard and selecting one of the three options in the “Appearance” sub-menu on the popup menu. The “dark” mode should prove useful when Hoku
is run in a dark environment.
An editor has been added to the “exec” module for generating the instructions for specifying the file path of the input and output image files. The editor can be invoked by selecting the ”edit” button next to the image file dialog boxes.
Learn Hoku
A Wiki / Tutorial that can help you familiarize with Hoku.
License
Copyright (C) 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 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
30 January 2026
