Kakadu (software)

{{Infobox software

| name = Kakadu

| title =

| logo =

| screenshot =

| caption =

| collapsible =

| author = David Taubman

| developer =

| released = At least 2002

| discontinued =

| latest release version = 8.4.1

| latest release date = {{Start date and age|2023|11|20}}{{cite web

| url = https://kakadusoftware.com/documentation-downloads/downloads/

| title = Downloads – Kakadu Software

| website = kakadusoftware.com

| access-date = 2025-02-13

}}

| latest preview version =

| latest preview date =

| programming language = C++

| operating system = Unix/Windows/macOS and others

| platform = IA-32, x86-64, PowerPC, ARM architecture, SPARC

| size =

| language =

| genre = Graphic software

| license = Proprietary

| website = {{URL|https://kakadusoftware.com/}}

}}

Kakadu is a closed-source library to encode and decode JPEG 2000 images. It implements the ISO/IEC 15444-1 standard fully in part 1, and partly in parts 2–3. Kakadu is a trademark of NewSouth Innovations Ltd.

Kakadu was developed by and continues to be maintained by David Taubman from University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia. He is also an author of EBCOT, one of the algorithms used in JPEG 2000.

{{cite book

|author1=Peter Schelkens

|author2-link=Athanassios Skodras

|author2=Athanassios Skodras

|author3-link=Touradj Ebrahimi

|author3=Touradj Ebrahimi

|title=The JPEG 2000 Suite

|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4eOnNwXah7EC&pg=PA458

|accessdate=22 October 2010

|date=12 October 2009

|publisher=John Wiley and Sons

|isbn=978-0-470-72147-6

|pages=458–459|author1-link=Peter Schelkens

}}

The software library is named after Kakadu National Park.

It is used by several applications, such as for example Apple Inc. QuickTime. It is also used in Google Earth and the online implementation thereof as well as Internet Archive.

{{citation

|title=Legal Notices for Google Maps/Google Earth and Google Maps/Google Earth APIs

|author=Google Inc.

|url=http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/legalnotices_maps.html}}

{{citation

|title=Google Maps

|url=https://maps.google.com}}{{Cite web|url=https://archive.org/post/1022297/kakadu-error-ppm-image-file-must-start-with-the-magic-string-p6|title=Internet Archive Forums: Kakadu Error: PPM image file must start with the magic string, "P6"!}}

Kakadu library is heavily optimized and is a fully compliant implementation. Also, it has built-in multi-threading. In a 2007 study Kakadu outperformed the JasPer library in terms of speed.{{Cite journal

| title = Scalable Lossless High Definition Image Coding on Multicore Platforms

| journal = Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing: International Conference, EUC 2007, Taipei, Taiwan, December 17–20, 2007: Proceedings

| publisher = Springer

| author1 = Shih-Wei Liao

| author2-link = Shih-Hao Hung

| author2 = Shih-Hao Hung

| author3-link = Chia-Heng Tu

| author3 = Chia-Heng Tu

| author4-link = Jen-Hao Chen

| author4 = Jen-Hao Chen

| volume = 4808

|date=December 2007

| pages=746–747

| issn = 0302-9743

| doi = 10.1007/978-3-540-77092-3_64

| isbn = 978-3-540-77091-6

| author1-link = Shih-Wei Liao

| series = Lecture Notes in Computer Science

| doi-access = free

}}

A more thorough comparison done in 2005, however, has shown that Kakadu does not achieve the best performance, in terms of compression quality.[http://compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/jpeg2000_codecs_comparison_en.html MSU JPEG 2000 Image Codecs Comparison]