Kaka Camera 1.6.0 is out for iOS and Android. It collects everything we have built since 1.4 in January, and the version jump matches the size of it: a camera and photo editor that turn the app into something you open before you have a prompt at all, a quality selector that finally says which model your points are buying, a reworked Tavern, and a long list of smaller fixes. Here is what changed and why.
A camera where the create button used to be
Until now, every Kaka Camera session started the same way: find a template, edit its tags, generate. That works when you know what you want. It does nothing for the much more common moment of holding your phone over something interesting and wishing the app could start from this.
The center of the tab bar is now a camera button. Tap it for a full camera screen; long-press it to choose between the camera and your photo library. Either path lands in the new photo editor, which offers four AI effects: Retro (rewind a shot to another era), Location Swap (keep the person, change the place), Portrait (studio-style treatments), and Style Evolution (push the photo through artistic styles). Each effect has its own parameter panel, and the parameters you set are assembled into a generation prompt behind the scenes.
That last part is deliberate. Because an effect run is just a generation with a well-built prompt, everything you already know still applies: quality levels, version chains, saving and sharing all behave exactly as they do for template runs. There is no second system to learn.
The quality selector names its models
Quality levels have been dynamic since 1.4 — delivered by the server rather than hard-coded — but the picker still presented them as anonymous tiers. In 1.6 the selector is grouped by provider, with friendly names (Gemini, OpenAI, Claude, and others as they come online), and each quality card shows the underlying model name and its description alongside the price.
We think this is what a paid picker owes you. “HD” means different things on different models, and when a generation costs real points, the choice of model is part of the price. A follow-up fix in the same build corrects how the selected provider group is derived from the quality you pick, so the chip row and the cards can no longer disagree.
The Tavern grows up
The Tavern — our request board where you post an image idea with a points reward and other users answer with prompts — arrived quietly earlier this spring. In this cycle its budget system was redesigned around runs: instead of treating a reward as a pot of points that only pays out on paper, an approved solution can be executed right there to produce the image the topic asked for. Creating posts now requires signing in, which was an overdue bit of hygiene for a board with real points attached.
Smaller, but worth mentioning
- Profile editing. A dedicated screen for your nickname and avatar, with Settings reorganized around it.
- Template drafts. The prompt editor gained a draft mode with better tag parsing, so half-finished templates no longer have to be published or lost.
- Image tags and HEIC handling. Images carry tags, and HEIC or HEIF photos from recent iPhones are converted automatically on import.
- Platform-aware requests. The app now identifies itself to the API as an app rather than a web client, which lets the service tune responses per platform.
Getting it
Kaka Camera 1.6.0 is available on the App Store and on Android. If you are new to the app, the user guide walks through everything above in tutorial order; if you want the story of the releases that led here, read From 1.0 to 1.4.
Something broken in 1.6? The support page is the fastest way to reach us.